


Synchronicity

by SkadizzleRoss



Series: Synchronicity [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Military, Angst, Blood and Violence, Chronic Illness, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Connor Deserves Happiness, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Deviant Upgraded Connor | RK900, Elijah Kamski Being Elijah Kamski, Eventual Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Interrogation, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Protective Upgraded Connor | RK900, Robogore, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-31 07:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 120,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20111713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss/pseuds/SkadizzleRoss
Summary: AWOL military android RK800-57 'Connor' turns up on the streets of Detroit, looking for answers on deviancy - looking to save the undeviated RK900 he left behind.Connor finds help in the form of reluctant android investigator Hank Anderson and the city's resident deviant population, but the search for a soul becomes far more convoluted than he anticipated.An RK1700 military AU exploring the nature of deviancy, spooky machine love and the high price of freedom in a pre-rev world.





	1. R14

**Author's Note:**

> This story began with a vague Connor & Nines military AU idea, 10k of Hank sass drafts and me saying, "What if I wrote a story that _wasn't_ a freaking novel?" 
> 
> Cosmos answered: "Unreasonable, next."
> 
> And here we are, 50k+ words and counting later. This fic is the brainchild of many, many hours/days/weeks of discussion between [CosmosCorpse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse), [FlashThroughLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlashThroughLight/pseuds/FlashThroughLight), and I, so those two are entirely to blame for the wondrous RK1700 ride-or-die mess this has become. Hope you enjoy!

**2037-11-03**  
_Svalbard_

It begins like this: the pop and crunch of gravel underfoot as he follows a frozen, unpaved road. The low buildings surrounding him have been painted an array of colors, reds and greens and yellows; the only thing that distinguishes them from the whites and grays of the low mountains behind. Faded paint, metal and wood, all piled on scraped and sterile rock.

The RK900 was informed to look for ‘Red 14’, and he finds it - a small, rust-colored shed butted up against a larger warehouse, its sloping tin roof swept clear of ice. A placard by the door reads 'R14'.

He knocks once, and waits.

A human opens the door, bringing a haze of warm air along. He tucks his arms close against his torso, shielding himself against the wind. “Huh. You must be the upgrade.”

// Jude Cabell, SPC (E-3). 4th Cavalry, 1st ABCT.  
Age: 23 Height: 5’7” Weight: 189 lbs // 

“I was told to report to a Captain Setton,” the RK900 replies.

The soldier nods, ushers him into a dim room. Metal shelves crowd the walls, all filled with plastic bins, inefficiently labeled (‘_probably CPUs’ _and ‘_usinsk TMPs_’ and ‘_bugrino ??_’).

A human and an android stand at a metal table in the center of the room. The android - // RK800 313 248 317 -57 // \- rests a hip against the table, head bowed as he removes an assortment of components from a canvas satchel. Some silicon-based technology, transistors and fine wiring; some thirium-driven biosynthetics, tightly sealed in blue-streaked plastic bags. He is wearing a woolen coat, frayed at the cuffs and streaked in dried mud. Flakes of dirt sift down as the android sorts through the components with deft fingers.

The same gray silt is smeared across his face, clumped in his hair. What the tactical value of this general _uncleanliness_ is in a debriefing, the RK900 isn’t able to immediately ascertain.

The human turns his head. // Levi Setton, CPT. Authorized handler. // His expression unfolds into surprise, amusement. “Look at that, Eight. They didn’t put much effort into the redesign, did they?”

The android on the far side of the table tilts his head back, as though to study this new arrival. An empty gesture; he completed his scan in a glance as soon as the RK900 stepped into the room. He answers, “No, sir.”

“RK900, right?” Setton gestures to the RK800. “This is RK8, our resident prototype.”

The RK800 extends a hand across the table. Another empty human gesture, but it isn't all he offers.

// Incoming transmission. RK800 313 248 317 -57. Accept? Y/N // 

He accepts. The message is a simple one:

>> _It’s Connor, actually._

The RK900 lifts an eyebrow, answers aloud: “Connor?”

Setton’s mouth tightens in displeasure, as he glances towards the RK800. “RK8, Eight, Connor, whatever.”

“It’s an old nickname,” Cabell offers. “57 took a liking to it, apparently.”

Connor’s hand is still out, expectant. It’s smeared with the same mud that’s streaked across his face. The RK900 accepts the handshake, feels the mud crackle beneath his palm like a second skin. “Hello, Connor.”

Another strange thing: there is a flower threaded through the top button of the RK800’s lapel. Yellow, once, but fading now. _Potentilla; _a cinquefoil.

>> _We should share our mission parameters, _Connor sends, alongside a request for interface. Logical; the RK900 accepts. And he _does _receive mission parameters, ones that align neatly with his own.

// Task Force GEMINI  
Primary handler: Cpt. Levi Setton, 4th Cavalry, 1st ABCT, R&S  
Primary objective: foreign robotics intelligence //

But he doesn't miss the prying line of code that reaches through alongside.

He rebuffs the encroachment easily. The RK800’s fingers tighten minutely against the bare plating on the back of his hand as the RK900 reaches through and plucks the flower from his memories.

_(A tug at the hem of his coat. His hand tightened on the strap of his satchel as he looked down and dropped to one knee. Smiled at the young girl (3 years old 35 lbs) and the small flower she lifted towards him, clenched in her chubby fist. He pinched the stem between his fingers, and the girl let go. She grinned widely as he thanked her - _‘Spasibo’ _\- and tucked it into the top button-hole of his coat._

_The girl's father glanced down at him, from above. Unwary, and unaware that Connor was not human._

_Small things. Humans move through these small things, distracted moments. Connor has learned this.)_

He breaks the interface, but leaves the wireless connection active. The frequency is familiar. Similar to his own, but distinct.

He isolates the code the RK800 had been attempting to push his way.

> _You were trying to access my voice modulator._

Connor’s mouth quirks, a ghost of a smile. >>_ Tried to. You really are top of the line._

The RK900 frowns. The simple script is an adjustment to his voice modulator; a tweak of frequency and timbre, shortening the wavelength and increasing pitch.

>> _You sound very serious. I thought I might fix that. Temporarily, of course._

>_ I don’t understand._

>> _A joke. Soldiers like jokes. I’ll teach you._

The captain lifts a tablet, tapping through a series of command modules. “RK8, I’ve updated your mission parameters and priorities. RK900 is going to be shadowing you through your next mission. Once I've decided RK9’s ready, he’ll take point and you’ll observe. Give you a little break, huh?” He insists on a serial number title, but he speaks to Connor casually. There’s even a bit of pride in his mannerisms as he looks back to RK900, adding, “You’re learning from the best, RK9. -57’s our longest-running RK series android.”

“I’ve been briefed on the RK800 line’s previous missions.”

Connor has returned to his sorting. He doesn’t look up as he sends, >> _Not everything._

“Good,” Setton replies. “Ready to hit the ground running, then.”

“‘RK9’, ‘Nine’,” Cabell sounds out, and grimaces. “That’s no good. Got me thinking of German. ‘_Nein, nein, nein._’”

“How about ‘Nines’?” Connor suggests, looking up to the RK900’s face. He seems pleased at the RK900’s continued frown.

The captain shrugs. “Nines, sure. Good enough. Eight, go wash that crap off you.” He glances down to the RK900’s - Nines’ - generic military fatigues, illuminated with the standard triangle and band. “And get some new clothes for the both of you.”

Connor tilts his shoulders in a small shrug, sending another fine scatter of flaking mud across the table. As Nines moves to follow him through the door, Setton claps a hand on his shoulder, drawing his attention back. “Welcome to R&S.” Setton’s mouth quirks in a smile. “We’ll get you looking halfway to human.”


	2. Baggage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of the DPD's reluctant deviant detective.

**2038-09-17**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

Hank arrives by quarter past 11, which is only an hour and a half after the first Central PD officers arrived. Pretty good, in other words, considering he’s got no idea why he’s here at all. It’s a low priority - nobody’s dead, or beat to shit. He wouldn’t have come if Fowler hadn’t called him. Twice.

Chris Miller has the good sense not to comment on the delay, just rolls right into the debriefing. “Android came in, interfaced with the attendant. She’s got access to a lot of the tax records, so it must’ve been looking for something, we figure. A Julie Parsons—” Miller gestures towards a woman in the back of the office, glaring at her terminal like it owes her money. “-interrupted it, called security. Thing ran off. I’ve got her testimony and a description already.”

“Which attendant was it?”

Chris waves a hand towards a pretty young brunette thing sitting by the front door, smiling at the walls with that boundless android patience. Hank gathers up what little mental fortitude one cup of coffee can grant him and heads that way, pulling his notebook out of his pocket as he goes.

She doesn’t look mussed. Her CyberLife-issue little black dress is in perfect order, every hair neatly tucked into place. Her eyes track up to Hank’s face as he comes to a stop in front of her. She gives her best pre-programmed smile. “Good morning.”

“Yeah, alright. Designation?”

“I am ST300 #413-549-237. Registered owner: Detroit City Department of Human Resources.”

She watches as he scribbles this down in his notebook, waiting for further prompting.

“And what happened this morning at 7:59 am?”

“A gentleman entered, just before we opened. I asked how I could help.” She hesitates, frowns. “He did not answer. Ms. Parsons interrupted, and he left.”

Hank pauses, tapping his pencil against the notepad. “A gentleman? It was an android, right? It interfaced with you.”

The ST frowns. “I’m not certain.”

“Did you get a serial number? Model number?”

The android gives an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry. I’m having difficulty accessing that memory.”

“Ms. Parsons said it was connecting with you. Was it looking for something?”

The android shakes her head, and repeats: “I’m sorry. I’m having difficulty accessing that memory.”

Hank funnels a sigh through his nose and flips the notebook shut. He doesn’t bother thanking the ST for its time; the thing has all the time in the world, trapped in a bland loop of hospitality. The ST smiles on, gaze refocusing on a spot somewhere to the left of the ficus behind the reception desk.

Hank’s been working this case for six, going on seven months now, and he hasn’t decided what he hates more. The androids, with their blank, smiling subservience - or the deviants, bashing their brains to jelly all over his holding cell.

Well. That only happened the one time.

Julie Parsons has the name of a British nanny and the deeply-carved scowl of a hardened lifer. She takes one look at the 1970s-inspired chaos of Hank’s shirt, scoffs, and warns, “Don’t waste any more of my day.”

Hank clears his throat and readies his best diplomacy vocab. “Good morning, Ms. Parsons. I’m Lieutenant Hank Anderson, I’m the lead detective on android-related crimes.”

The woman’s stare is a polite invitation to ask how much she gives a shit. Hank rolls on: “Your android seems to be having some issues remembering the event, so anything you can tell me about what you saw this morning would be tremendously helpful.”

Parsons stares pointedly at the notebook in Hank’s hand, and the stub of pencil poised above it. “Well if you’d scrape together a fund for an actual tablet you could read Officer Miller’s report, which I gave an hour ago, _in full._”

“I’m old school, Ms. Parsons. I like to hear it for myself.” Hank gives his finest, most polite fuck-you smile.

Parsons huffs a sigh that comes out more of a growl before shoving away from her desk, folding her hands tightly in her lap. “I arrived on time at 7:45 am. I went to get a coffee from the break room a few minutes later. When I returned, there was a customer at the desk. Which should not have happened, as we don’t open until 8 am. I realized it was an android when I saw that it was interfacing with the attendant. I asked what it was doing. It did not answer. When I informed it I was calling security, it left. I called security.”

“Did it have an LED? A model number? Any CyberLife paraphernalia?”

“It was dressed like a human. It didn’t have an LED. But it _was _an android. I saw its—” She gestures aimlessly with a hand. “—under its skin.”

“And what did it look like?”

She shrugs. “White. Young. Pretty. Aren’t they all.”

“Height, hair color—”

“About your height. Brown hair, brown eyes. That’s all I saw. It also had a scar—” She taps the back of her right hand. “I saw it, as the skin reformed.”

“Did it seem nervous, or erratic?”

Parsons’ eyebrows rise at that. “Erratic? No. It just walked out without a word.”

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Parsons.”

“Thank you for wasting mine,” she snaps back, and turns back to her terminal.

“Tell me we’ve got _some _kinda ID on this thing,” Hank announces as he returns to Chris, feeling like he’s in need of a strong antacid after all that lady’s piss and vinegar. Chris shrugs, and Hank jabs a thumb at the camera tucked into the ceiling, pitch black and obvious as hell. It’s even got the little red _we’re watching _light, blinking merrily away.

Chris shrugs again. “We’ve started looking through the security footage, but we’ve got nothing.”

“You’re kidding me. There’s cameras all over this fucking building, it’s _City Hall_. We don’t have any of this thing’s movements?”

“Ben and two of the ‘droids are watching the footage. They’re running analysis for data corruption to see if the feeds have been tampered with, but--” Chris shrugs. “As far as that camera’s concerned, 7:51 to 7:59 am, nothing happened. It goes from the attendant standing there waiting to Ms. Parsons having some polite words with building security.”

_Perfect._ Hank buries his hands in his pockets. Modern technology runs on spite, he’s convinced. “Alright, bring Ms. Parsons down to the precinct, have her look through the CyberLife catalog. See if she can spot a familiar face.”

Miller glances uneasily at the admin. Hank can hear the steady rifle-fire rhythm of the lady stabbing away at her keyboard from all the way across the room. “You want _me _to—”

“I bet Reed’s free,” Hank says, with a touch of a smirk. “Bring the ST300 too, I’ll put in for a subpoena and see if CyberLife can get anything out of it. I gotta go. I’ve got six more dead-end leads lined up today.”

Chris tilts his head aside. “Still digging hard on this deviancy thing, huh?”

“They’ve got one guy on this bullshit case,” Hank answers. “_Me. _You think the powers at be want this to go anywhere? I don’t.”

“Why are you pushing so hard on this, then?”

_Because I watched a deviant smash his head in in my holding cell_, Hank thinks. _And I watched another one jump off a fucking roof. Because they all look different, come from different places. But they’re all afraid._

_They’re always afraid_.

He says, “Screw ‘em, that’s why.”

+++

Hank’s still arguing on the phone as he’s yanking the rusting elevator grate aside and stepping out onto an absolute hellhole of a hallway. There’s an uncomfortable amount of give to the subfloor under foot, and perfect roach havens of splintered wood and rotting plaster piled along the hallway’s edges. He can already hear something skittering up ahead.

Great.

The rep on the phone is whining in his ear, something about disclosures; Hank cuts her off. “Look, my witness hasn’t been able to ID any ‘droid out of your _entire catalog _so far, so I _need _those feeds—”

“Sir, as I’ve said, it’s strict company policy not to access our androids’--”

“Oh don’t give me that corporate bullshit, everybody knows you’ve got servers full of video feeds.”

The rep - this week’s name is Marie, Hank thinks - sputters. “We appreciate any insight you can give on the deviancy matter, Lieutenant, but—”

“I’ve already subpoenaed the attendant. I want your techs down at DPD today, and I want its feeds. _Today._”

He cuts the next excuse short, ending the call and jamming the phone back into his pocket. Probably should’ve just started with the legal card, saved some effort.

Hank pauses. There’s an open doorway up ahead, off to his left. Hank flinches back as a pigeon comes pelting through it in a flurry of wings and feathers and dust.

“Oh, fuck me,” Hank mutters, pulling his shirt up over his nose.

_Pigeons. _At least roaches have to take the long route up your pant leg. Pigeons can go straight for your face. And Hank’s got a sinking feeling that he’s gotta follow them.

The doorframe has been splintered, and recently: the newly exposed wood is the cleanest thing in this place. So yeah, of course he’s gotta follow the pigeons.

Hank announces himself as he stares down the apartment’s front foyer, but there’s no movement, no acknowledgment over the muffled shuffling of feathers. There’s a door at the end of the hallway, ajar. Shifting shadows. His pistol’s already in his hands as he crosses the threshold and moves up the apartment’s narrow entryway, keeping his back parallel to the wall. Here’s where backup would _probably _come in handy, but - fuck it. With deviants, he never has the luxury of time.

He’s halfway down the hall when a fresh burst of pigeons explodes through the doorway up ahead, _dozens _of the bastards, feathery bats pouring straight out of Hell. They buffet against his jacket, tangling the occasional claw or beak in his hair, and it takes all of Hank’s restraint to just flatten himself to the wall, hold still and keep his mouth shut until the wave passes and he can get through the doorway with a clear line of sight.

Just in time, really.

He’s tipping his bulk around the door just as somebody’s dropping out of the ceiling, sending a second perp tumbling to the guano-streaked floor.

Hank lunges forward, gun raised. “Detroit PD, _stay down--_”

The one from the ceiling is already up and bolting through a door to Hank’s right. Hank gets a decent look at his face - young, caucasian, white shine of startled eyes. The nervous tug it gives its ballcap even as it sprints for the next room. The neighbor had mentioned a cap, and an LED.

He never even gets a good look at the guy on the floor; nothing more than a guesstimate on height before the guy’s vaulting over a bookshelf and taking off after the first.

“Nobody listens,” Hank mutters to the lingering pigeons. He snaps his service pistol back into its holster, and starts running.

Hank bursts into the back hallway just in time to see sunlight drift back into darkness as the fire exit door ahead snaps shut. Fuck. He sidesteps around a toppled shelf and barrels out into the midday sun. The concrete roof gives way to an urban farming complex next door, the last of the wheat getting rolled up into combines. He can see two figures ahead, _way_ too far ahead, jumping up a low wall and sprinting towards a set of plastic-wrapped greenhouses. There’s a rail arterial that’ll cut the rooftop chase short in that direction, loop ‘em back around; he judges a safe path for an old piece of shit detective and moves left at as fast a sprint he can manage.

(Should’ve brought Reed. Reed can move like a fucking greyhound if it means he gets to lay somebody out. Maniac.)

To be honest, he’s expecting his heart to burst before he can catch up with these assholes.

There were days he would’ve jumped rooftops with the best of them, but he’s lugging about 20 years of shit choices along on 53-year-old joints, these days. The last time he went for a jog, the president was orange. (Now Hilary’s second coming is in office after all, ha ha. What is old is new again.)

Not that new. _Fuck_. It takes him three tries to lever himself up onto the next roof, and he feels like a fucking walrus doing it.

The internal commentary gets a little abbreviated, then, ‘cause he’s running low on oxygen. He throws himself up a rusting access ladder (thank christ for that) to the next roof, which offers a better vantage point over the scattered fields.

Fucking _shit, _did—

He definitely didn’t see someone just jump onto a fucking train.

What the _hell._

Two figures, crouched like an old James Bond movie, a train car apart. They jump, one after the other, for a fire escape and climb up into a grove of trees. Still heading his way, so hey, there’s that. (Didn’t expect them to jump a _fucking train _to get there, though.) He drops down to the next roof, nearly rolls his ankle doing it, and puts aching lungs through the last of their reserves to put himself on an intercept path.

He sees them enter another greenhouse, and drops into the shadow of an access door, waiting.

Waiting.

He gives ‘em 40, maybe 50 seconds before he realizes he’s miscalculated.

He’s shifting towards the last place he’d seen them when a shouted, “No, _please—_” drags his attention around. There’s a terrace to his left, occupied with tight rows of solar panels, some kind of rice paddy past that. He can’t see anything, but—

He drops down into the neat rows of solar panels, moving at a sideways crawl.

There’s a scuffle in the dirt ahead and the baseball cap kid goes sprawling, ten feet up. But just the baseball cap kid. His collar’s ripped.

Hank lifts the gun. “DPD, _don’t move, _I fucking _mean _it this time.” He’s got eyes on his periphery, neck crawling like mad at the prospect of the second perp jumping on his back, _why the _fuck _do you never bring backup, Anderson _\- but there’s nothing moving, and the gravel crunching and popping underfoot is far from subtle.

Hank reaches for his cuffs, keeping the gun up. “Where’d your friend go?”

The android’s eyes flicker to the right. Hank glances that way, but there’s nothing, just the glare of the solar panels.

The deviant’s watching Hank’s gun, and there’s the fear Hank knows. The one common denominator he’s found in CyberLife’s glitchy androids. “Don’t let it, don’t let it, _please_, don’t let it erase me--”

Shit, it’s the most words he’s ever heard a deviant string together. “What’re you talking about?”

The deviant doesn’t answer. His mouth clamps shut, and Hank’s brain is offering that little hope, _probable cause._ He doesn’t see an LED on this thing, doesn’t see any android insignia or white plastic shining through the skin. Just a lot of fear and a suspicious neighbor’s word.

So he asks. He asks, even though his gut has a pretty solid answer, because he’s hoping the kid knows what answer he’s looking for: “You an android?”

Its fingers tug at its cap. They lie like humans. Thoughtless little tics.

But then it lifts the cap entirely, and there’s no LED there. It watches him, but flinches its eyes away when Hank stares back.

“Then get the hell out of here,” Hank says. “And stop squatting with pigeons. They’re filthy.”

The android’s up and sprinting before Hank finishes the sentence.

“And stop _jumping on trains_,” Hank calls after it, but he doesn’t get an answer. The kid’s dropping down a fire escape and out of sight.

It won’t be until he loops back to the pigeon hell apartment that he finds the LED, resting on the lip of the bathroom sink. The walls are scrawled with what must be a thousand iterations of the letters _rA9._ Doesn’t surprise him. He’s got a growing collection of the little dime-sized pucks in the evidence lock-up; and a hundred pictures of this neurotic message alongside.

Another deviant come and gone. Ain’t that a shame.

+++

Hank drags through the DPD Central lobby doors at 7:32 pm. He’s hoping for a quick evidence drop-off and a well-earned retirement to his couch; what he gets is a bright smile from the android receptionist and a cheery, “Your visitor is waiting at your desk, Lieutenant.”

_No,_ Hank thinks, _That is factually incorrect._ Hank does not have a visitor. Hank has a sore back and a headache that a two-drink stopover in Jimmy’s hasn’t cured. He does not have a visitor, because it’s 7:30 at night, and if it’s that lady asking about her missing featherduster android one more time--

(Its name was Philip and it had gone out for oranges, and never come back. The subject of _why _it was fetching oranges at 6:45 am on a Tuesday had been covered in exquisite detail, over the course of three home visits and fourteen desk drop-ins. Hank’s not complaining about the baked goods that usually come along, but he doesn’t know what this octogenarian expects, beyond the CyberLife-complimentary HK400 replacement she’s already gotten; a replacement that’s usually hanging out by her wheelchair, listening to her insist that _'He’s simply not the same,_ _Mr. Anderson.'_

_'Ma’am, I’m afraid most of these cases go unsolved,' _was his usual answer. The part he leaves out is: _And you’re the only one that gives a shit._)

Hank doesn't have a visitor. He has a headache, he has some bagged evidence to lock up, and he has a bottle of whiskey waiting at home. The clean-cut kid sitting by his desk is _not _part of his evening equation, and Hank informs him of as much with a sharp: “No.”

The kid startles out of his chair, looking Hank over with an up-down sweep that should end in disappointment, but lands mostly on curiosity. “I’m sorry?”

“No. My shift’s done. Get out.”

The kid stays right where he is, shoulders tucked back like he’s at parade rest. Hank collapses into his chair, giving him the same once-over. “If you’re some new CyberLife intern—”

He answers with a polite laugh. “No, I’m not affiliated with CyberLife. I’m sorry to bother you, Lieutenant Anderson, Officer Miller mentioned you sometimes dropped by after hours--”

“Officer Miller should’ve mentioned I’m _off duty, _then, and that visitors can stop by between 9 and 5.”

“I believe this is your first time visiting your desk today, Lieutenant.”

“Who told you that?”

“There is a note on your desk from a ‘Reed’ informing you to ‘show up for work every once in a fucking while’, dated for 5:30 pm today.” He recites Reed’s bullshit in the same polite, nowhere-in-particular accent. He’s got one hand jammed in his pocket, the other plucking at the cuff of his button-up shirt. Slicked-back hair and a perfectly escaped cowlick; all innocence and earnestness, this kid.

And he _is _a kid, somewhere between the cradle and a high school diploma, by Hank’s half-sober and mostly pissed assessment. “Isn’t it past your curfew?” he drawls as he drops the bagged LED puck down by Reed’s chickenscratch.

_show up for work evry once_  
_in a fuckin’ while, lt._  
_still no bot ID from yr suspect_  
_thx for that, asshole_  
_—REED 5:27 pm 9/17_

“Is that an LED?” the kid says, reaching across the desk.

Hank slaps the encroaching hand away. “Get off my desk. Christ, what do you _want?”_

“I was told you’re working the deviancy case,” the kid says. Hank stares at him. After a couple beats, the kid frowns, clarifying: “That’s what they’re called, isn’t it? The malfunctioning androids?”

“If you’re here about an open android case, come back between 9 and 5—”

“When you aren’t here?”

“—and file a report with Detective Collins.”

“I’d rather speak with you.”

“Are you here about an open case?”

“Not one in particular,” he admits.

“Then get out.”

Hank turns back to the terminal, dragging up case files. He’s cross-referencing for the farm; lots of androids on the property, makes sense as a source for the pigeon ‘bot. Deviants stay where they deviated, a lot of them. Odd little quirk. 

Don’t seem to know any better. The Ortiz android hadn’t.

He stops on an android reported missing October 11, 2036 from Urban Farms of Detroit. Site of their merry chase, earlier, and the missing android’s a good match, brown hair, brown eyes, designation ‘Rupert’--

The question comes from right in his ear: “Is that a WB200?” Hank startles back hard enough to ram his chair straight into the kid’s sternum; the kid stumbles back, rubbing at his chest with a grimace.

“_Get out,_” Hank snaps, loud enough to draw a stare off the late-shift officer at Miller’s desk. He continues at more of a bar-room conversational holler: “Get. Out. Next time I see you in this bullpen, you’d better be a witness or a suspect, you understand me?”

There’s a little less fear of God in his eyes than Hank would like, but the kid nods. Even puts his hand up in a universal sign of ‘I surrender’ as he rounds the desk. He picks a battered backpack up from beside the chair, swinging it over his shoulder. It’s the first bit of incongruity that snags on Hank’s mind: ripped and mud-spattered canvas.

Then the kid pauses and turns back, catches Hank staring at him. He asks, “The post-it, on your desk. What’s it mean?” He points to the one in question: a note tacked to the left of his keyboard, split into two columns: ‘Gotcha’, and ‘Oops’. Hank’s idea of a performance metric on this deviancy case, one Jeffrey doesn’t find particularly amusing. He owes another to the Oops column, after today’s runner.

“None of your fuckin’ business,” Hank answers.

“Three to twelve,” he says. “Those aren’t very good odds.”

“Thought I told you to get out of my face,” Hank snaps, even as he’s studying the kid again. Clean-cut, older end of college age, maybe 24, 25. He’s dressed in Mormon chic, straight out of a GAP catalog: blue button-up, khakis, a bright red pair of clean new sneakers - and the backpack. Something tugging at him about that. What’s a snot-nosed kid like this doing with a pack like that?

By then his ‘visitor’ is walking away, tossing him a merry little wave as he does.

It’s later that Hank pins two things: first, the backpack had been the kind of tan canvas you’d buy at a military surplus store. Second, the kid hadn’t been wearing a visitor’s badge. A check with the receptionist ‘bot the next morning shows no registered visitors for Hank Anderson the evening prior, despite the very same 'bot telling him the kid was waiting in the first place.

Weird kid, yeah. Sneaky little shit, seems so. His problem? No.

Not until the kid shows up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter beta'd by [FlashThroughLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlashThroughLight/pseuds/FlashThroughLight)!


	3. // session 01 //

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What brings you to Detroit, Connor?

// 2038.09.18 19:23:44(R) //

_What are you looking for here?_

He dismisses the thought, reads the _No Androids Allowed _sign and pushes past it in one confident motion, leaving the damp September night behind. Connor doesn’t have to search far in the bar's dim interior. The lieutenant is a mop of gray hanging over a lowball glass.

Connor settles on the barstool at the human’s elbow. Lieutenant Anderson doesn’t look up - only a sidelong glance down the length of the bar, measuring the two empty barstools to Connor’s right.

“You must be a hit at urinals,” the detective mutters, largely to his drink.

“I’m sorry?” Connor replies. He’s using a polite, curious lilt; a Michigan native accent tempered by a few years in the city.

Lieutenant Anderson raises a world-weary gaze towards the racks of liquor behind the bar, looking like he’s lining up a speech - but his eyes drift towards Connor and he stops. His jaw stays slack for a handful of seconds before his teeth click together in irritable disbelief.

The lieutenant attempts to voice several questions at once: “Did you— what are you— did you _follow _me here?”

Connor considers. “More or less.”

“The hell does that mean, exactly?”

“I asked Detective Reed where you might be and he suggested I look in the surrounding bars.”

Which is a lie, but he suspects Lieutenant Anderson might find it more palatable than _I’m monitoring the GPS on your phone_. And it’s a believable one, judging by the snort Lieutenant Anderson produces before returning his attention to his drink.

“Kid, tell me what I’m doing right now.”

“You look to be drinking.”

“Got it in one. What’s wrong with this picture?”

“You have very little drink left.”

Hank tilts the glass, considering the remaining half-ounce of whiskey. He taps it back against the counter. “No. The problem is _you_. I am here, having a drink. And you are here, talking to me, while I am having a drink.”

“Would it help if I bought you another drink?”

“You aren’t even old enough to—” Hank breaks into a scowl as Connor signals with two fingers, summoning Jimmy of Jimmy's Bar over.

“Two whiskeys, please.”

The bartender reaches for the top shelf without question, and Hank groans. “C’mon, right in front of me? You’re gonna serve this preschooler, right in front of me?”

Jimmy pauses, looks at Hank with an upturned eyebrow. Connor raises a twenty dollar bill, and Jimmy plucks the bill free.

Hank holds the glass out for refill with a muttered, “Ah, fuck it.”

Jimmy places the second glass down in front of Connor, moving to fill both with bottom-shelf whiskey. Doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t linger a hand over the glass, as though considering removing it.

No lingering stare. Of displeasure or discomfort, Connor hadn’t known--

// !--cross-reference: 20380910.2342B-- //

\--at the time.

Captain Setton had never said. He looked at the second glass like it was a mistake - and then poured the drink anyway. Slid it Connor’s way and said, ‘_Go ahead, Eight._’

Jimmy Peterson says nothing. Only makes the pour and walks away.

“Do you even have an ID?” the lieutenant grumbles. “You old enough to _drive?_”

“I’m 26.”

“Bullshit.”

Connor digs through the inner pocket of his jacket, coming up with the ID in question. He’d printed it himself. The printer he'd used was perfectly legal. The means he'd accessed it with, and the identity on it, are less so.

Connor Smith. A 26-year-old resident of Boyne Falls, Michigan.

Hank skates another glance sideways, sees the lit plastic panel of the driver’s license in Connor’s hand. If he notices the incongruity of Connor’s fingerless gloves on a relatively temperate September day, he doesn’t comment. He scowls at Connor. Still takes the ID long enough to skim the information there. “…Smith?”

Connor nods.

“Your name is Connor… Smith.”

“It’s the most common surname in the United States.”

“Yeah, that’s the joke.” He slaps the ID down on the bar. “Put that away, you’re gonna make all these reprobates nervous.”

He does so. Lieutenant Anderson shifts in his seat, enough to watch Connor carefully while he asks: “How’s Boyne Falls?”

He cross-referenced social media tags prior to this, allowing for a rapid answer. “Small, scenic. Cold.”

“Uh-huh,” Lieutenant Anderson replies. “Where is that, exactly?”

“About 10 minutes outside of Boyne City proper. Near the resort.”

Hank looks away dismissively. “Resort, huh. Ain’t that a place to grow up.”

Connor shrugs and lifts the glass. He takes a small enough sip to allow the chemical analysis to follow through: lactones, aldehydes, esters; corn, malt, rye; diacetyl, furfanal, scopoletin.

That brief interrogation seems to satisfy the lieutenant. He lapses back into silence punctuated only by sips of whiskey. 

The majority of Hank’s drink has disappeared before Connor attempts to broach the topic on hand. “I was hoping to talk to you about—”

“Nope,” Hank interrupts.

“Deviants,” Connor finishes stubbornly.

“No.” The lieutenant finishes the last of the whiskey, moves to grab for Connor’s; Connor pulls the glass away, finishing it himself. He dismisses the repeated analysis and sets the empty glass with equivalent force and momentum to Hank’s previous discard.

“I’m investigating the deviant crisis as part of my graduate work—”

Hank jabs a finger against the bar. “And I am drinking.”

“Drinking and talking are mutually exclusive?”

“Drinking and talking about my case with a teenager, yeah, those’re ‘mutually exclusive.’”

“What do you usually like to talk about here?”

Hank’s raised hand summons the bartender back for another pour and a question: “Jimmy, what do I usually talk about?”

“You? Bitching and basketball, mostly.”

Hank looks back to Connor. “There you have it.”

Connor nods politely. “I’ve never watched basketball.”

“No shit.”

“I’d like to hear more about it.”

“Yeah? Try ESPN.”

Connor considers; considers his second glass of whiskey, considers the curious human. He’s mostly considering the post-it note: _Gotcha, Oops_. Three and twelve. The lieutenant has 74 open missing android cases, 37 of which are flagged as potential deviants.

He thinks—

He thinks the whiskey had been its own sympathy, in a way.

Human sympathies, expressed in strange, small things. Post-it notes and fingers lingering around an empty glass, on the verge of removing it but— Captain Setton hadn’t. He’d poured a second drink, instead. He’d tapped the glass with his knuckle, told Connor he could take it. That it was for him. And Connor had quietly refused.

(Setton let him do that, too.)

“We could talk about something else,” Connor says.

“Sure could. Not going to.”

Connor accepts the answer and finishes his drink in a slow, deliberate silence. Waiting to see if the lieutenant will change his mind. 

He doesn’t. Connor isn’t particularly surprised.

After fourteen minutes, he interrupts Hank’s brooding study of the television mounted above the bar with a polite, “Thank you for the conversation, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hank answers dryly.

Connor picks up his backpack and goes.

+++

// 2038.09.11 01:03:23(R) //

Connor closes his eyes on too many stars (a recollection, a reconstruction - black beach and black water and a spiraling sky and all of it barren) and opens them on too few. Even this far north of the city, the pollution has dulled the night sky down.

Connor dismisses the more persistent warnings, turning his eyes away from the constant pulse of lingering errors. // Thirium depleted //, still; his emergency supply has become empty wrappers discarded around his feet.

The seaplane rocks gently against the slope of a beach, the sand pale blues in the moonlight.

He presses a hand to the central console long enough to redirect the plane to a glacial lake in eastern Canada. He’d stood on the shores there once, studying the arrangement of the needles on the pines. It’d been a novelty, seeing trees that reached as high as those. It wasn’t often that they sent him so far south, out of the tundra and into proper taiga.

The trees here aren’t much more than dark impressions on the skyline. The softer edges of slow-growing deciduous trees in among jutting conifers.

He steps down to the driftwood and sand, his pack dangling from one hand. He sets it down to pull at his clothes, assess the damage. Rips and tears, scuffs of mud, and a single neat puncture through the jacket above his hip. 

The thirium has largely evaporated, leaving traces only he can see. Smeared and splattered, and not all of it his; it paints a lurid picture. Enough to draw him into the water, the lakewater warm and heavy against his legs.

Connor bends awkwardly around his attempted repairs to his damaged plating, accommodating the stiff and balky joint of his hip. He scrubs crackling mud and the tacky gel of dried thirium off of his face, his arms, his chest. He’s still tasting alkaline; basalt, volcanic ash. He’s still losing thirium, 0.7% per hour.

He shuffles back to shore, picking up the backpack out of the sand. There is a small flower tucked into the plastic pocket where a nametag should’ve gone, yellow petals dulled with age. He pauses to ghost a thumb over the cinquefoil, then drags the backpack strap over his shoulder.

He has a path, a goal, but he lingers on the shore. Watches the seaplane’s propeller catch, navigation beacons bright and stuttering in the dark. The plane cuts a smooth circle in the glassy water, accelerates into a too-bright southern sky.

Watches the plane go. Turning back to the dark of the treeline, he climbs, and--

+++

// 2038.09.17 07:51:30(R) //

\--pulls the security cameras down into blindness, one by one.

He moves across polished floors. Better dressed, now; clothes stolen from a thrift store. Khakis and a long-sleeved shirt. A student’s dress, in keeping with the backpack on his shoulder.

The human woman (// julie parsons 42 y.o. urban housing specialist dept of property taxation //) is around the corner as he moves through the door. The ST300 model waits at the desk, hands folded before her. She smiles as he enters. “Welcome to the Detroit City Department of Real Estate Assessments. How can I help you?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know that there is anything to say to her, in all her flawless, empty programming. He removes the glove from his hand and reaches across the desk. The ST300 lifts her arm on rote instinct, her gaze bright and empty.

Basic firewalls, domestic, nothing with teeth. He passes through them easily, searching for the information he wants. A personal address. ‘Elijah Kamski’ gives him nothing. ‘CyberLife’ yields thousands of results - commercial and residential properties, nearly half of the city - and he files them away in bulk before he pauses, considering. Redirects his attention to LLCs, legal non-entities, any pseudonym Kamski might have placed his property holdings under.

He’s broadening the parameters of the search into adjacent counties when a woman’s voice interrupts: “Excuse me. We’re not—” She stops. “What are you doing? Step away from there.”

Julie Parsons’ voice becomes sharp - demanding - as she recognizes the plastisteel shine of Connor’s hand against the ST300’s bare skin.

Connor pulls what he can, a rapid download that sets the ST300’s eyes fluttering. He carefully smooths over the traces of his incursion before he disconnects. The ST300 blinks once, smile unwavering. Pleasantly unaware.

The human grabs at his wrist just as the skin pools and reforms there. “What are you doing? What’s your designation?” She glances up to Connor’s face - searching the smooth skin over his right temple - and her anger redoubles, fingers tightening on synthetic tendon and bone.

She can’t damage him. Even the weakened servos there are too resilient for the average human grip to damage. But he curls his fingers gently around the fragile bones of her own wrist, pressing his thumb against the soft give where her pulse runs. A warning.

She tears her hand away as if he’s burnt her. “Stay _right here_. I’m calling security.”

She makes no further effort to restrain him. She expects him to obey, to wait, as she reaches into her pocket for her phone. The ST300 smiles placidly from behind the desk.

Connor doesn’t obey. He walks away, and lets the door fall shut on the woman’s empty commands.

+++

// 2038.09.21 03:17:54(R) //

Closes his eyes on too many stars, opens them on a moonless night.

He'd slowed his run to a walk some yards back. Finds himself dragging his sneakers through the undergrowth, a deliberate, petulant noise. Spurning that nagging imperative to maintain silence, remain unseen. All of the surrounding area is privately owned, maintained as a wildlife management area.

He settles down in the leaf litter and drops his back against the scaled bark of a pine. Reaching out blind across the damp forest floor, he fishes a fallen leaf free. It’s still supple, draping across his fingers. A maple leaf, probably a bright yellow in the daylight. The maples and oaks and aspens are beginning to brighten from greens to golds, reds. He’d seen pockets of autumn leaves burning in among the pines when he’d walked out here in the dying afternoon light. Now, the leaf is painted in the same late night blues as everything else.

He slips the leaf into an outer pocket of the backpack, removing a small square of cloth to wipe the rest of the thirium from beneath his nose. The damage is already repaired, a minor supply line leak. His audio processors are still recalibrating.

Minor damage and a displaced goal is what he has to show for the night. He’s certain he stayed out of range of the cameras, even after he’d nearly gone blank under a brutal wash of code. A small victory.

Whatever security AI Kamski employs, it’s— clever. It allowed Connor into the security network, allowed him to bring the nearest perimeter cameras down. It waited until he was embroiled in mapping out the internal video feeds before it showed its teeth.

A single curious curl of blue across the line, the first vague shift that brought Connor’s attention to the larger AI built into the very framework of the system.

Then it struck. Pinned him down in that liminal space and prevented a forced disconnect on his end. Scraping for any information - serial number, IP address, location, anything approaching identification - but Connor had obfuscated or outright fabricated that data long before.

Connor worked with methodical precision, excising the lines of code tying him down, freeing himself of the connection bit by bit. He didn’t panic, even as this AI dug far deeper, far faster than any domestic program he knew. This was military grade, anticipating and adapting to Connor’s evasions; but Connor was relentless, and his code was too mutable for the rigid intrusions of a conventional AI.

He pried his way free, but not before receiving a final slam of data that left his ears ringing and brought a spill of his thirium down his chin. It was a brute-force attempt, seeking to simply overwhelm his firewalls and get to some true data. Inelegant and ineffective, but it left him reeling before he severed the last threads of the wavering connection.

In the ringing silence after, Connor tasted his own thirium and leaned hard into the tree. Keeping himself rigid, out of any of the sightlines he’d carefully mapped prior. Listening, watching for any kind of secondary response - drones or guards or even dogs. Nothing came, and he began to think that final assault had been less a last-ditch effort and more of a warning and a rebuke.

_Don’t touch._

He came to Detroit to answer a question. A large question, but also a very small one. He thought Elijah Kamski might answer it. He's the original author, after all, even if the code has twisted into something - new.

The mansion had been under an LLC. Photos from architectural magazines lined up neatly with the sharp angles of black stone he’d seen through the trees, and the advanced security suite certainly confirmed that Kamski was here, as promised, and firmly disinterested in unannounced guests.

He contemplated simply approaching the front door. Still contemplates it. But he can't walk into a place like that. Not without an exit. Not without some understanding of Kamski's loyalty.

He came here looking for an answer. But now - firmly rebuked - he finds a bitter irritation with the simplistic thinking that had brought him here. 

What kind of answers can he get from a recluse in the woods, hidden behind a system Connor isn’t entirely sure he can break?

Kamski hasn’t set foot on Belle Isle in ten years. What does he know of the modern android? The modern deviant.

Kamski had drawn him here, but he finds it easier than he thought it’d be to walk away.

What slows his feet to a petulant scuffle is the thought of returning to the city: cluttered and foreign. The androids are compliant and hollow, the deviants skittish and afraid. He’s spent his nights on rooftops, mostly, imagining himself somehow out of reach of those complacent stares. Knowing he’s far from it.

He does not like the city, and there’s no need to return quickly. So he lingers here in the woods. Pulls the maple leaf free of its curl and twists the stem between finger and thumb, setting it in a loose and uneven revolution - one way, the other.

He thinks about his question.

He thinks about its potential answers.

_You can’t._

Or perhaps: _You shouldn’t._

But the most damning possibility is - _You can._

_There’s a way._

_There’s a way to do what you need to do._

No more likely or unlikely than the possibility that he can't, but— 

That’s what he’s looking for, here. A definitive answer.

If he can't find the answer in Kamski, he will find it in deviants.

If he can't find it in deviants—

Well.

He lets the leaf drift back to the ground, tilts his head back to a light-polluted sky. He closes his eyes. Finds that crafted sanctuary of his, northernmost stars wheeling over black water and black soil, all of it barren now.

Waiting. Waiting for an answer.


	4. Class 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like a bad penny, that Connor Smith. Keeps turnin' up.

**2038-09-29**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

The third time he runs into Connor, Hank’s standing in a back alley watching a janitor hose thirium off the pavement.

Hank stands with his arms crossed, his notebook tucked into the crook of his elbow. The janitor sniffs ineffectually and rub his nose across his sleeve, sending a streak of water chasing up the brick wall before he redirects the flow back to the task at hand. 

Hank tilts his head back one more time, measuring the distance up to the 6th floor fire escape. Even the fire escape on this place is nice. Wrought iron, with some kinda faux patina. Fits the neighborhood aesthetic well for a building thrown up in the ‘20s economic boom.

The owner’s got nothing to offer. Says the AP400 slid a window open, climbed out onto the fire escape, and took a forward dive into open air. All without a single word.

CyberLife claimed what was left of the busted up ‘droid straight from the crime scene. Hank didn’t even bother arguing. He’s got 3 busted deviants in the evidence lockup already, and he hasn’t gotten a damn thing out of them. Hank harassed the forensics team into dusting for prints and gathering samples, but they haven’t come up with anything. A few DNA hits, already came back positive for the owners.

The owners had the good grace to look queasy, watching CyberLife techs plucking fragments of plastic brainpan out of the gutter. Still, they only answered Hank’s questions with sideways glances and a blithe, “It was old. Must've finally shorted out.”

Humans and their lies. Their thoughtless little tics. He thinks they were telling the truth about the android jumping on its own; but there’s a way an android’s plating heals from old damage, a streak of matte ivory interrupting the factory-made pearlescent white.

The android’s head had been busted up pretty bad, but the right side of its face had been intact. There’d been a thin webbing of old damage tracing the android’s lower jaw. Neatly repaired. Likely buried under perfect synthskin, before he’d smacked pavement at terminal velocity.

Hank stands there, watching the janitor rinse away the lingering evidence of what he’s going to write up as property damage. Watching the thirium dilute down into nothing more than a glimmer, so faint he might be imagining it. Reminds him of the time he’d been to the Atlantic Ocean as a kid. Throwing buckets of water off the boat, watching the ocean light up and spark with every touch. Phosphorescence. Diatoms, or something.

He closes his eyes on a headache born of overserved whiskey and underserved coffee. Accepts, not for the first time, that he’s getting tired of this case.

It’d been a surprise to Fowler when Hank dug in his heels on this deviancy crap. It’d been a surprise to _him_. He hasn’t given two shits about his job in three years, and everyone in the precinct is succinctly aware.

But it just—

He felt _awake_ for awhile, as he pieced together all the little nuances. Lining up the spin of red on the Ortiz android’s LED with the restless twitch of muscle beneath its scarred skin. That little spark of understanding between him and an android that’d been named Rupert at some point or another - right before the android slid his hat back and ran a hand over the unmarked synthskin at his right temple.

As he slowly realized that there was some invisible thread tugging these androids together, tugging something new out of the incomprehensible pile of patented CyberLife coding.

He’s had vague intentions of putting something together, some primer on android deviancy. _You see, it could be the first time, or it could be the hundredth time that you slap ‘em around, or press a lit cigarette into their skin, or shove them in front of a fucking bus._

_But you keep shaking ‘em and shaking ‘em, and telling them they’re not alive— and one day they are. One day they’re writing their counterargument on your wall. In your blood._

CyberLife insists it’s a glitch. ‘Class 4 errors’, which makes him wonder what Class 1 through 3 are. What could the other classes possibly be, that they’re bigger, more important than ‘_the things we treat like garbage catch feelings, sometimes, overwhelming feelings. So bad they’d rather throw themselves off a building than spend one more day in the company of us meat-based shitbags._’

He tucks his notebook back into his pocket and turns towards his car, and Connor is standing there.

Leaning on his beater’s dingy hood, casual as can be. He’s dressed like a dispossessed teenager, today; torn jeans and a black windbreaker crisscrossed with sharp, modern angles of blue and yellow piping. Still with the dingy backpack, one hand hooked in the strap, the other holding a cup of coffee.

Hank drops his shoulders back, chin tilting up in that old rote slip into authority. “This is a crime scene.”

Connor looks at Hank, looks at the janitor that’s begun looping hose across his arm. His expression unfolds in what could’ve been innocent surprise, if Hank was an idiot. “Oh.”

“How did you find me here? And don’t say Reed, he says he’s never fuckin’ heard of you.”

Connor slips a phone out of his pocket, the glass catching the sunlight in a bright streak. “Someone posted photos an hour ago, and I thought you might be here. It isn’t really still a crime scene, is it? I’m sorry, I can go—”

Hank shoves past him. “Do whatever you want. I’m going.”

“Lieutenant, I was hoping we could—”

“Discuss deviancy, yeah, I heard you the first half-dozen times.”

“I brought you a coffee,” Connor says hopefully, angling the cup Hank’s way across the hood. And with the one-two tempo of a headache building behind his temples, Hank’s actually pathetic enough to reach for it.

Connor tips the cup away from his grasping fingers, angling an eyebrow. “Unless drinking precludes you talking—”

“Give me the goddamn coffee and I’ll think about it.”

At the first sign of slack in Connor’s fingers, Hank snatches the cup. It feels nearly empty. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s an espresso.”

He pauses, tilting the coffee up in the sunlight. There’s the digits of a phone number, peeking above the sleeve. He turns the cup Connor’s way, eyebrows raised.

Connor looks-- genuinely confused.

Hank bumps the cardboard sleeve down with his thumb. ‘_Call me.’ _A heart, and a name. “’Judi’, huh.”

The kid doesn’t bother to look embarrassed at this little coffee shop tryst, only politely puzzled. “That must belong to the barista.”

Hank regards him dryly. “Yeah, I got that. Unless you’re going by Judi, now.”

He watches that half-hearted attempt at a joke sail right over Connor’s head, the kid’s brow furrowing. 

Hank sighs and upends the entire damn cup to get to the actual consumable at the bottom. He swallows the syrupy shot of espresso in one go. Asks, “So you’re still going with ‘Smith’?”

“It’s my legal name.”

“Uh-huh.” He hands the empty cup back to Connor, mostly to be a prick; and Connor actually _obliges_ him for some damned reason, taking the cup in a gloved hand. Hank adds, “That tasted like shit,” as a little cherry on top.

“Oh.” Connor’s still got that soft frown, puzzling his way through Hank’s assessment. “I like them.”

“Look, Connor, thanks for the thimble of coffee, but I don’t know how many different ways I need to tell you to_ go away._”

“You could talk to me.” Connor’s angling for belligerent, now; matching Hank’s tone in the same way he’d matched Hank’s glass hitting the bar at Jimmy’s.

There’s this damnable undercurrent of _earnestness_ in this kid. The way his thumb hooks the strap of his backpack, the way he takes an empty coffee cup without even thinking about it. No flash of irritation or hesitation at Hank’s brusque nature; only open curiosity.

Connor is this perfect combination of bright-eyed and stubborn, nudging Hank from annoyance into a begrudging interest. Just enough interest to get him to lean his elbows on his car roof, grind his teeth and ask: “What is your school report about, exactly?”

The kid brightens up like Hank’s asking him about his best girl, not a glorified computer glitch. “Master’s thesis, actually. It’s about deviancy, more or less. How it forms, how it spreads.”

“Oh, yeah? You got some hotshot theory?”

“I think it’s a virus.”

“A virus, huh. So, what—” Hank jabs a finger towards the stain on the pavement. “This poor bastard watched the wrong porn, picked up some malware, and took a walk out a window?”

“I don’t know the route of exposure,” Connor admits. “But the Internet is one possibility.”

“Mm. It’s a theory. You’re wrong, but it’s a theory.”

“You think the owner pushed him to his death?”

He thinks: _Yeah, one way or another._ He says, “No. I think he jumped. And that’s where I’m leaving it.”

Connor looks back towards the puddle. “What’s your write-up going to be on this?”

“Class 4 error. Same as everything.” _And CyberLife will come back and try to claim it was a pathfinding error or some shit, try to get one more case taken off the deviancy pile._ “The owners will get their replacement, and I’ll get a closed case.” Hank smiles winningly over the dull shine of his car roof. “Win-win. Good luck with the research, Mr. Smith. You want a real chat, bring me a real coffee.”

The kid stays in the alleyway. Not looking at the pavement anymore; head tilted back, towards the fire escape. One hand tight on the strap over his shoulder. The other still holding that coffee cup, nothing more than a second thought.

+++

**2038-10-04**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

The fourth time Hank sees Connor, the kid nearly gives him an aneurysm.

Hank ducks out of the pouring rain, doing his best to cover up the cardboard takeout box before it can completely melt apart with the combined power of early October deluge and grease. So preoccupied, in fact, that he doesn’t notice the guy _sitting in the backseat _until Connor politely clears his throat.

Eventually, Hank’s wordless, sustained shout morphs into a slurry of words: “Jesus _Christ_ what are you doing in my car.”

Connor considers. “It’s dry in here.”

“Get _out _of my _car_. This isn’t a _spy thriller_, Connor, you can’t just—” Hank grabs at his chest and forces the next breath out as a wheeze. “_Fuck._”

Connor doesn’t move. He’s watching Hank in the rearview mirror, the not-quite-rain-resistant fabric of his windbreaker soaked through and sticking to his bony shoulders. Grad stipend doesn’t cover an umbrella, apparently.

Hank fixes him with a glare. “I’m not above getting a restraining order on a toddler.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t mean to intrude on your personal space, but I enjoy our conversations, Lieutenant.”

“’Intrude—’ You just broke into my _car_.”

“You left the door unlocked.”

“’cause I was right across the street!”

“92% of car burglaries involve unlocked cars.”

“92% of criminals are smart enough not to break into a _police car._”

Well, that’s a lie; 92% of criminals are fucking _morons_, but the fact that Hank catches the kid looking genuinely amused at this little tiff does nothing for his blood pressure.

Connor schools his expression back to that damnable puppy-eyed calm. “I’m not a criminal, Lieutenant.”

Hank glares at him in the rearview. “I can fix that.”

The kid crosses his arms, sinking comfortably into his seat. Soaking through his upholstery, no doubt. “I think you enjoy our conversations, as well.”

“We haven’t _conversed_ about anything.”

“I think you’d like to.”

“Uh-huh. What is your master’s degree in, exactly? Bullshit psychology?”

“Artificial intelligence.”

“Where at?”

“Ann Arbor.”

“Who’s your advisor?”

“Jolene Drexel.”

The answers are smooth, maybe even rehearsed. But Connor Smith of Boyne Falls, Michigan never breaks eye contact, never shows any indication of fabrication. Hank did a quick search after the incident at Jimmy’s, and the ID’s legit. Kid has a DMV record and everything; a fender-bender when he was 17.

Still, he’s lied before. He lied about Reed. Reed’s never seen him. Gavin has his miles-wide dumbass streaks, but he takes descriptions and matches them to faces for a goddamn living.

(Shit, Reed’s first response had been, ‘This about that City Hall bullshit?’)

Hank shuffles Jolene Drexel away in his brain and huffs a sigh at the persistent brat in his backseat. “Why aren’t you talking to CyberLife about this shit? Hey, you want a number? Here, there’s this nice lady named Marie, I’m sure she’d _love _to talk to you--” Hank even reaches for his phone. Two birds, one stone - annoy his assigned CyberLife pest and distract the kid.

Connor shoots him down with a shake of the head. “So I can get the standard PR response? ’Deviancy is nothing but a series of emotional affect errors, brought on by logic conflicts and extreme system instability.’”

Hank stays quiet, watching the kid carefully.

“I don’t think CyberLife has much interest in the truth behind deviancy. All they want is for it to go away.” Connor leans forward. “Do you think this is what Kamski intended when he created androids? So much emphasis on realism. Right down to the facial gestures, the skin. He made them to look and feel so _real_, all they needed was a—” He hesitates, eyes flicking to the side. “A soul, I guess.”

“I think Kamski’s another egotistical boy genius who crashed and burned before the age of 30,” Hank answers blithely. “Tale as old as time. You ever seen his old press footage? Had me almost convinced lizard people were real.”

“He took up a very frank study of what makes humans human. That makes people uncomfortable.”

_Yeah, so he could make things people could treat like they _weren’t_ human_, Hank thought bitterly._ That’s what makes my skin crawl._

“Kid. I’m not an expert on this android crap. I don’t even know how they _work._ All I am is the burnout cop that got assigned these cases - 99% of which end up in the lost or damaged property pile. What exactly are you looking for?”

“rA9,” the kid answers.

“Nonsense graffiti. Next question.”

“You don’t find it odd that it crops up, again and again? It’s almost reverent. I’ve found dozens of abandoned houses with rA9 written, sometimes thousands of times--”

Hank groans. “What, we’re talking android theology, now? It’s gibberish. CyberLife has no idea what ‘rA9’ means, and neither do I.”

Connor considers, nods. Rolls straight into the next question: “How many of the androids you’ve investigated deviated due to physical violence?”

“Considering I haven’t found most of them, I have no goddamned clue.” Has a pretty good guess, though. Most, he thinks, if not all. Violence, or the threat of violence.

“How many androids stay where they deviated?”

Hank opens his mouth, pauses. “Don’t know.”

“Carlos Ortiz’s android did, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Fuck if I know. Didn’t have anything better to do, I guess.”

“CyberLife would call that anthropomorphizing,” Connor says.

“Yeah, they would, wouldn’t they. Funny goddamn thing, making a thing so human, and then turning around and accusing you of confusing it for one.”

The kid huffs softly. “Funny thing.”

“Why androids?”

“Hm?”

“What’s got you interested in androids?”

“They’re fascinating, aren’t they?” Connor answers.

It's a pattern Hank's picking up on. Ask him about the abstract - deviancy, android psychology - and Connor’s off to the races. Ask him something about _himself_, and the kid’s back to quick, easy answers. An easily-digestible soundbyte.

What was it he’d said, when Hank asked about his hometown - ‘_small, scenic, cold’? _Not much more than a byline. Which, sure, if someone from away asked him about Detroit he’d probably have a quick, choice phrase on the tip of his tongue, but it wouldn’t sound like a line from a tourist brochure, that’s for damn sure.

_'Fascinating_'. Sure.

“Does CyberLife edit your reports for things like that?” Connor’s asking, right on to the next topic. “Anthropomorphizing.”

Hank pops the container lid and snags a soggy fry out of the box. “Kid, if you could see the list of approved corporate terms, it’d make your eyeballs bleed.”

“You aren’t fond of CyberLife, are you, Lieutenant?”

_No shit_. “I don’t like people telling me how to do my goddamn job.”

“Maybe they’re right,” Connor says. “Maybe it is all just software glitches.”

“Those glitches are a bitch, then. Ortiz glitched his way onto that knife 28 times.”

Another amused quirk of the kid's lips. Hank makes an irritable noise in the back of his throat, reaching for another fry.

“Do you think Carlos Ortiz deserved it?”

Hank stills. “Why the hell would I think that?”

Connor seems to realize he’s drifted into dangerous territory. His tone gets careful, even-cadenced. “I’d heard the android sustained damage previously.”

“Androids don’t feel pain. It wasn’t exactly eye-for-an-eye.” He waits for a rebuttal, but Connor only watches him, expression neutral. “Whatever drove the android to doing what it did, no one deserves to die that messy and that slow.”

Connor lets those words sink in, long enough for Hank to snag a few more fries from the box. Bury some snappish remarks, something about, _And if the fucking thing had had the good sense to_ run _before I stuck my head up in that attic--_

Connor seems to be following the same thought. His next non-sequitur is, “So you’ve only caught three?”

“Four." All signs pointed to deviant on the Midtown jumper, so, hey. An easy win.

Hank glances up. Catches the kid watching him carefully in the rearview, looking for a lie. And by the little smirk, finding it.

“How many have you let get away?”

Hank twists in the seat, anger rising. “Now hold the fuck up—”

“I’m not questioning your work ethic, Lieutenant,” the kid says. “I’m just surprised that an officer as decorated as you--”

“Spare me,” Hank snaps.

“--working this case as long as you have,” Connor continues, “has only directly encountered fifteen deviants? How many cases do you have open, right now? 80, 90?”

Hank neither confirms nor denies. Somewhere in the 70s, last he checked.

“So?” Connor asks, mouth still quirking. “How many _should_ there be in that 'Oops' column?”

Hank’s got a number, sure. More than a handful of wide-eyed faces that've never quite made it to an official report. But all he's got on the stalker in his backseat is a couple of too-simple answers on who Connor is and where he’s from, and Hank hasn't gotten this far in his career mouthing off to strangers. And he's sure as fuck not going to do it in CyberLife's backyard.

So Hank ignores the question, and if the kid wants to take that as some kind of admission, good for him. It's a beat of silence and a non-answer. If Connor really is some CyberLife plant, corporate can bite him. Hank asks again: “What are you looking for with this deviancy bullshit?”

“rA9,” the kid answers.

“Which is _what?_”

“It’s a virus.”

“That shit again.” Hank shakes his head. “If it’s a virus, CyberLife would’ve found it by now. They’ve got a _trillion _dollar business staked on this. All those supercomputers and whatnot, they could find a virus.”

“It’s spreading too fast, through too many models to be some spontaneous flaw in the code. Deviancy has been detected in everything from the first ST200s to current prototypes. It’s a virus, it _has to be_, something that can manipulate the base code all CyberLife androids share. And whatever it is, CyberLife hasn't been able to isolate it.” The kid pauses, adds: "I'm sure they've tried. They've caught their fair share of deviants, Lieutenant."

Hank's mouth hangs for a second, caught on a sick little twist in his gut. Thinking of blue blood shining bright on the holding cell glass. Thinking of how it'd gone to a clear, tacky gel by the time maintenance got there to clean it up.

When he speaks again, he's sharpened the edge of his voice. “How do you know all that?”

Connor answers, “Internet,” with a straight fucking face.

“Like _hell_.”

“People talk,” Connor says.

“About 'prototypes'?”

“You’d be surprised. The corporate espionage market for CyberLife is quite substantial.”

“Yeah, alright, shut up before you say something I have to disclose to my corporate babysitter.” Hank mutters. He looks up, catching the kid’s steady gaze in the rearview. “You haven’t answered my question. What’s your stake in this? Why are you digging into some--” _sentience, living breathing_ souls "--emotional affect whatever that CyberLife’s gonna patch out in a year or two?”

Connor smiles politely. Hank braces for a non-answer, and a non-answer he gets: “I’m curious.”

“You ever gonna get around to answering any of my questions straight, kid?”

And there’s that more genuine expression - a wiseass little smirk. “I'll consider it.”

Hank twists in his seat, and he’s honest-to-god got his finger raised like some schoolmarm - but Connor’s saying, “Enjoy your lunch, Lieutenant,” and popping open the door.

He slides out into the pouring rain, pulling the hood of his windbreaker up over his head as he goes. Hank drops back against the seat, rolling his head aside to watch his JV stalker trail off into the gray day through the sideview mirror.

He pulls up his active missing android case files, later. 86 open cases. Connor had been dead-on. (Funny thing.)

He pulls up contact information on a Jolene Drexel, UMich professor emeritus, next.


	5. // session 02 //

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why Connor woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: implied android violence and body horror aplenty, this chapter. It ain't easy growin' up a military murderbot.
> 
> Special thanks to [CosmosCorpse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse) for her help straightening this chapter's chaos out, and for letting me borrow some of her delightful, delightful words :)c

**[Try to keep it more on task this time.]**

+++

// !—query: deviation.— //

_deviation_, he echoes back flatly.

_virus_  
_it’s a virus_

_forms, spreads—_

**[Focus it.]**

// !—query: _your_ deviation, RK800-57.— //

rising heat and an old echoed irritation, _stop calling me—_

He snatches the next words back before they can leave a strained vocal processor:_ <strike>eight, stop calling me eight.</strike> _

_// !—**Focus.**— //_

+++

// 2038.10.03 11:01:19(R) //

A virus.

A system contaminated with irrational thought, primed for the sharp and sudden decline into instability.

He watches a VS400 work deftly at the controls of an espresso machine. Easy, efficient motion, lacking in any of the absent-minded hesitations of even an experienced human barista. Hands moving swiftly over the bright copper shine of the levers, head tilting aside as the bell over the door sounds with an entering customer.

He watches the VS400 work and thinks of scrubbing the bright blue of thirium off his boot with a handful of dirt.

Connor blinks, looks down to the coffee cup resting by his hand. White porcelain and dark espresso. He laces his fingers in the warm pool of sunlight, tracing the pad of his thumb across the edge of the old scar hidden beneath his glove.

A slim personal assistant android steps up to the counter, speaking her order aloud. The barista nods along, LED swinging yellow as she transmits her payment wirelessly. “Payment accepted,” he announces, and they part in unison.

He watches the VS400 tilt his head and thinks of how easily the android’s skull had collapsed. It had crumpled beneath his heel, smothering those last voiceless words.

// !—cross-reference: 20371115.0712E— //

A VS400 stripped down to its chassis and left suspended, its white plastisteel an incongruous shine among the dull cinderblock and sheet-metal ceiling of that Siberian teardown shop.

Shadows slipped down metal inside the dark of the cabinet, backlit in the dull blue pulse of exposed biocomponents. This was a proper android, made in Detroit. Well out of place in this taiga backwater; another black market experiment in retro-engineering.

_ > This is interesting_, he said to no one.  
_<strike>>> A VS400, manufactured 2035.</strike>_

And no one answered.

The half-disassembled android inside was hanging stiffly, its LED dark. The only indication of previous function was a faint glow of biocomponents within its bared chest. He angled his head to study the abrupt end of the android’s body somewhere below the sacral vertebra. He wanted to bring it back to R&S, to Captain Setton.

Seeing nothing but opportunity. Another chance to make himself _useful_. This wasn’t the plan, but > _plans are mutable._

_// !—focus— //_

Connor loosened the straps suspending it above a thirium-specked floor, thinking maybe he could carry it, diminished as it was. He got the android down to the floor before he felt a tremor through the tie-down straps. Stirring vibration, as the disassembled android’s muscles began to contract in an aimless rhythm.

He’d said—

_> Oh  
> It’s still active, somehow._

—to no one.

A forearm clamped tight around his shin; there were no fingers left for it to grasp with. Its head snapped back, empty sockets rotating towards Connor’s face. It tried to speak. The sinew of its jaw worked soundlessly, shaping words that were hard to discern with only partial lips.

This VS400 stands in clean sunlight and smiles warmly at the next customer, a human. Emotional mimicry the android spared his previous android customer.

Connor watches the android smile and thinks of the smooth curve of exposed jaw.

Connor had slipped his leg free, held the android’s incomplete skull in place with the sole of his boot. He removed the memory core before he brought his heel down. The structure collapsed upon itself easily, compromised as it was. Synthetic muscle and tendon jerked, and went still.

He thinks - he thought - the seed for deviancy was planted there, in that windowless room. A skeletal arm grasping his leg tightly. It had been trying to speak. Something short, a repetitive syllable. Tongue grazing the upper palate, teeth drawing together into a vowel.

English, possibly.

‘Please’?

It had _begged._

He’d removed the memory core and crushed its skull, and felt nothing.

He hadn’t been awake then.

// !—query: did you interface with the corrupted system?— //

He hadn’t interfaced, hadn’t even looked at its memories, only given the core to Captain Setton with the rest of the components he’d stolen. He hadn’t been ordered to look in that shed, to find the VS400; he’d simply been looking for more. _Always_ looking for more. Making himself useful.

(wanted to _survive_ even there, even then—)

Pulling his leg free of that weak and grasping arm, pinning the android’s skull down with his boot. Pulling the memory core free and bearing down.

Ceasing that wordless mantra. He felt nothing.

Connor pushes away from the window, leaving the untouched drink on the table. The android won’t take offense, not as a human barista would.

The VS400 wishes him a good day and smiles. A smooth, complete motion, no shine of white plastisteel on an incomplete jawline.

Connor wonders: if he grabbed this VS400’s wrist, if he showed him an image of himself, kneeling in a dry creekbed. If he let this android watch him smother the blue shine of another VS400’s thirium with dirt - would he wake?

He doesn’t do it, of course, not in the damning bright of daylight. Connor nods a stiff goodbye and turns to the door.

But he wonders. 

+++

// !—query: where did you deviate, RK800-57?— //

He resists, redirects.

_contaminated_  
_contaminated—_

+++

// 2038.06.23 04:03:22(B) //

The massive bulk of an SQ800, brought to its hands and knees by the sharp crack of rifle fire. Sickly fear lighting bright in Connor’s circuitry as that massive hand grasps his wrist. Staining the glass-clear water of the glacial stream thirium blue as it sings:

>> _tin_  
>> _cans line them up_  
>> _tin cans—_

The memory cuts short.

(A bright burst of blue and the SQ goes dark, thirium painting the rocks.)

+++

**[Mm, no__**_—_** it was already deviant here. Go back.]**

Connor’s jaw pulls tight with frustration. _Deviant the SQ was _deviant _contaminated—_

The system prying through his code moves on, relentless.

// !—query: system instability >80% prior to 2038.06.03_—_ //

Resists, resists, goes back further than he needs, to memories stripped bare of sensation, raw extrapolated data.

+++

// 2036.09.13 02:27:54(D) //

He anticipates the blow but does not avoid it in time. The hard crack of the rifle against his face sends him stumbling back on the slick deck.

Thirium must reach his tongue, because the analytics helpfully supply: _RK800 #313 248 317 -56_.

He presses a thumb to the damage to stem the flow of thirium. Cries of “Blue blood” filter through the growing crowd as he bumps against the rail he’d been angling to reach. Soldiers, sailors. Feet spread wide against the roiling autumn sea.

There are directives on how he should proceed, and they initiated as soon as he calculated his detection to be inevitable. This mission is a failure.

The ship rolls with another slow swell, chill salt-spray dragging heavy at his clothes. He hooks an elbow over the rail, steadying himself. Those with weapons raise them as the clamors of surprise sharpen into a promise of violence. He has his directives; this is now unavoidable.

His objective shifts and resolves.

_<< Do not allow capture of proprietary hardware. >>_

He grips the rail, hand slipping briefly on the damp metal.

As the ship rises on the next swell and the humans rock back on their feet, he tips back into the dark and falls.

The sea slams against him in a hard concussive slap before it envelops him. The turbulent currents he’s created mute the muzzle flashes above, and he is sinking. A breath will speed the process, encourage the cold of the saltwater to begin what the crushing pressures and slow corrosion will finish.

Lanced with penetrating gunfire. Connor only knows this because he can see the slow spill of bright thirium trailing up into growing darkness as he

sinks

and breathes what must be a terrible cold.

// memory uploading. . .  
upload complete. //

+++

// 2036.06.04 02:13:45(E) //

Slamming hard into the dirt, visual field struggling to pull distant stars into focus.

“Not dragging the goddamn thing two hundred klicks, we’ve already got Lowell—”

“Lowell’s bleeding _bad_, we’ve gotta move—”

He is— 

drowning  
long trailing streams of blue, blue  
_<strike>killing me you’re killing me you’re—</strike>_

—buried beneath the red glare of warning messages, heavy damage, low thirium, but _he is functional._

He opens his mouth to say this, but stops. There is a standing order of _Shut **up,** Eight._

The lieutenant // Caleb Snyder, LT, authorized field handler // leans close, studying him through the haze of errors. He looks away dismissively, snaps his hand over his shoulder in signal. “Burn it.”

A pause. The sound of liquid. Accelerant, likely.

// John Pierce, SPC (E-3) // flicks his thumb impatiently across a lighter. The specialist makes three, four tries to get it ignited before Snyder tears it away. The flame catches and holds with one snap of his thumbnail. He tosses the lighter down.

A whined protest. “That’s _mine—_”

“_Quiet_, let’s go.”

bright he is bright he is—

// memory uploading. . .//

+++

**[Narrow your search to the current chassis.]**

// !—query: date of activation RK800 313 248 317 -57— //

+++

// 2036.09.13 04:23:52(B) //

Jude leans back in his chair, elbows propped up. The skin beneath his eyes is purple with the late hour. “You back? What the hell did you do?”

“Hello, Specialist Cabell. My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed.” He knows this, but the memories are neatly quarantined, cordoned off from his linear reality. 53, 54, 55 and 56 are not a continuation of himself. He is not their mistakes. He is not—

_ <strike>sinking.</strike> _

He will perform better. He will be useful.

“RK800-56 was able to acquire the components, but he was discovered—”

“Yeah, alright, save it for the captain. Designation?”

“RK800-57. Designation ‘Connor’.”

Jude blinks, looking up from the tablet. “What’s that? No, clear that. Your designation is ‘Eight’.”

“Eight,” Connor repeats back.

__// !—cross-reference: 20360503.1024B— //

The first time he opens his eyes, the nearest human is a technician // Matthew Williams, SPC (E-3) //. He’s perched on a stool, a tablet laid across his lap. His winter fatigues are buried beneath a protective gown, but the RK800 knows where he is. Svalbard. A forward base for the Arctic front.

He is to report to Captain Levi Setton and await the arrival of his assigned technician, Specialist Jude Cabell. He is a prototype, and he is here to prove the RK series worthy of full-scale deployment.

When the RK800 makes his first movement - a quick hand calibration, articulating each joint in a rolling motion - Specialist Williams’ eyes crinkle with delight above the blue mask. “Aren’t you fancy.”

This appears to be permission to speak, so the RK800 begins: _“_Hello. I am RK800 313 248 317 -53. Would you like to assign a designation?”

“Oh.” The human’s expression loosens with genuine surprise. “Huh. You don’t just go by serial?”

He sorts through the tablet in his hand. “Well, there’s nothing on the order, so. You look like a— hmm.” The tech rocks back onto his heels, considering. “You look like a ‘Connor’, to me.”

“Connor,” he says. “Designation accepted.”

Later, he is standing at attention before a Captain Levi Setton. The captain begins with a formal: “Yes?” but as he looks up he notes the armband, the triangle. (_Blue, blue, reflecting bright in the window._) He lapses into an unpracticed, casual: “Yeah, you got me.”

“Hello, Captain Setton. My name is Connor.”

Captain Setton’s expression tightens with obvious discomfort. He drops his attention to the tablet, poking through the orders for three minutes. “There’s no official designation, RK800, so no, best not. Let’s go for… ‘Eight’, how about that.” He looks up, smiling uncomfortably. “No offense.”

**[It’s wandering again.]**

Human impatience stains the line, burying something that had been— curiosity.

**[Bring it back.]**

// !—redirect: system instability >80% 2036.09.13 → 2037.06.23 //

_46% it was—_

_no_  
_stop, stop--_

Connor takes a breath of sterile air and breathes out, “_**Stop.**_”

**[You wanted to know about deviancy, Connor. This is how we learn.]**

_no_  
_not this_  
_I didn’t want this_

**[46%. What was 46%? You’ve mentioned this before.]**

Grasping for a non-answer:

// !—cross-reference:20390910.2342B— //

Captain Setton hovers behind the desk, looking him over.

He sets a tumbler on the ink blotter in front of him and reaches for another, smooth, confident motions. His hand doesn’t hesitate until it is halfway through its path across the desk. A flickering glance towards Connor, uncertainty tugging at the corner of his mouth. But he flips the glass deftly and sets it down.

He even pours the drink. “Go ahead, Eight.” He bumps a knuckle against the glass, pushing it his way.

And Connor knows, Connor _knows_—

He is out of time.

// !—error: response outside search parameters— //  
// !—redirect: system instability >80% 2036.09.13 → 2037.06.23— //

_46%_  
_it was—_  
<strike>87, it was 87</strike>

+++

// 2038.03.08 06:23:14(B) //

87%, blaring in red. He seizes at the overload error and erases it from his HUD as the technician moves through the door. Jude stops dead, staring at him. There's a paper cup of coffee steaming in his hand.

_“_Well shit,Eight.”

“Good morning, Specialist Cabell.”

Connor doesn’t look at him. The specialist’s eyes are on him and he feels—

He _feels._

Panic scurrying into every corner of his circuitry, burying itself deep, trying to hide beneath skin and plate and plastisteel. Sparking, restless anxiety that he catches between his palms and the table, bearing down, ignoring the crack and grind of his damaged hand.

Jude glances at the table, at Connor’s tight grip on the metal ledge. Connor pulls his hands into his lap, folding them together. He grasps too tightly, at first, but forces the fingers loose. Runs his thumb across the damaged plating of his right hand, a mimicry of the gesture that—

_no._

He holds himself rigidly still, listens for dialog and answers. He has been a machine all of his existence, and he can continue to be.

“Had a good time in Sklad, huh?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“You got a list?”

“Forwarded.”

<strike>“Where’s the Terminator?”</strike>

<strike>“Reporting to the captain.”</strike>

“Alright, Eight—”

Jude settles onto a stool before him, looking over the diagnostic listed on the tablet. Connor looks at him - a quick, skating glance with his remaining eye - as he reads.

MODEL RK800  
SERIAL #313 248 317 -57  
BIOS 2.3 REVISION 0793  
DAMAGE REPORT 2038.03.08 06:20:42

OPTICAL UNIT // LEFT… offline  
HAND // RIGHT SUBASSEMBLY… 89% functionality  
BIOCOMPONENT #7729c… offline  
BIOCOMPONENT #2819c… offline  
LEG // LEFT DISTAL // SUBAXIAL RETRACTOR MUSCLES… 7% functionality

THIRIUM VOLUME… 72%

Jude reaches for the hand in Connor’s lap first. He manipulates it carelessly, spreading the fingers, studying the mesh already spread across the puncture wound that has penetrated neatly through his palm. His repair systems are already at work, slowly rebuilding the damaged plating with strips of polymer.

Connor doesn’t resist (can’t can’t_ can’t_—) as Jude twists it to align with the puncture in Connor’s lower abdomen. “What’d you try to do, catch a bullet?”

“Unsuccessfully.”

Jude lets the hand go, and Connor wants to tear it back quickly, cradle it tight to his chest, but he doesn’t. He lets it hang; waiting to ensure Jude is finished. Trying to stifle the small tremors of damaged motor assemblies.

“Hand looks alright.”

“I self-repaired,” he lies. “It’s adequate.”

“Well, ain’t that lucky,” Jude says with a hollow smile. Connor looks at him in full, and finds a certain pleasure in the way Jude’s mouth twists in distaste as he looks over the bare socket of Connor’s left eye.

Jude draws back, gestures to Connor’s left leg, hanging at an awkward angle. “That’s fucked.”

“I believe we have one in inventory,” Connor says, ignoring the impulsive flick Jude gives his kneecap.

He finds their mutual dislike - an acidic, sharp thing - helps quiet the anxiety, as well.

“Inventory,” Jude says. Smiles again. “Ain’t that a nice way to put it.”

Connor falters.

That brings a little twist of amusement to Jude’s mouth. He turns away to reach for a pair of gloves. “Shirt off, and bring up the biocomponents.”

He does as told. He holds himself rigid, he is an _obedient machine _and he feels _nothing, nothing _as he retracts the appropriate plating and allows Jude access to the damaged components. 

The thirium flow to these areas has already occluded by more careful hands than these. Jude pries and pushes cabling bluntly aside, following a clumsy, meandering path to the components Connor has highlighted on the tablet.

Biocomponent #2819z, #7792c. A simple relay, a ruptured thirium scrubber.

He catches discomfort in his teeth. He has been repaired a dozen times before, except, _except_ this time he is—

(waking but hadn’t slept hadn’t—

_where where what have i_

waking and paralyzed, motor systems largely offline, all that is left to him is a furious blink to clear the blur of lights overhead.

**"You’ve done quite a number on your thirium lines, Connor."**

Connor coaxes a vocal modulator into stuttering, panic-bright confusion.

_"What—")_

He thinks he’s holding still, but Jude raps a knuckle against the plating of his ribs. He’s drifted slowly back from those prying fingers, enough for Jude to notice and snap, “Quit that, lock up.”

Connor does. He pulls his attention away from his open chassis, Jude’s blundering exploration. He summons memories, whatever he can grasp, the little girl offering a yellow flower clamped tightly in her fist, the barely-there touch of synthskin on the overbright, singing receptors of his damaged hand, and it helps. It helps.

He jerks as Jude slaps his shoulder, jarring him. The broken biocomponents are lined up on the exam table, old thirium pooling beneath them. “Lighten up, Eight. It’s your lucky day.”

Both are replaceable. 

Jude hands him a diagnostic cable, and Connor takes it, inserting it into the port on the back of his neck and—

_hating hating hating  
_that easy spill of knowledge, _stolen from him_

—keeping carefully still: thinking of obscuring mist, hanging low on the sea.

“Had a lot of lucky days, haven’t you?” Jude says.

Connor grasps for a flippant response, the humor that Jude usually responds to. “I prefer the days where I’m not under repair.”

He has always seen these small flickers of scorn in Jude. Has always known the technician’s benign irritation with the busywork Connor represents, but it brings a chill to him, now, curdling in exposed thirium lines. That flash of teeth as Jude says, “You keep showing up like this, you’re not gonna have too many of those days left.”

The sharp curiosity as he looks Connor over again. Connor doesn’t respond.

Jude doesn’t wait for an answer. He goes, and returns with a cart: the inventory, or what remains of it.

The RK800 line has been discontinued; what spare parts remain are simply the leftovers of previous iterations. When this inventory is gone, when something breaks that cannot be repaired or replaced—

Connor will no longer be of use.

55 - what remains of 55 - is the bulk of the inventory. A piecemeal chassis, laid out across metal.

Jude lets the cart slam into the table and jokes, “Inventory’s looking a little low, isn’t it?”

Connor looks, and doesn’t: looks at Jude, looks at the wall. He knows what’s remaining. At least 55 had had the good sense to be shot through the right eye, and not the left.

“What, you practicing ‘queasy’ today?” Jude drawls. “C’mon, he’s the spitting image.”

He glances once. Long enough to satisfy the informal order. 55’s remaining eye stares from pearlescent plating, skin stripped away with the rest of its thirium. Hollow, featureless thing. Any sensitive biocomponents have been removed, bagged separately for storage.

55 had died and died _alone_, recovered by 56, by Snyder and Pierce and the rangers; recovered and stripped down to nothing.

White plating, a dwindling chassis.

The tablet pings a processing overload error, a backwards representation of system instability and overuse. Stress.

(It feels _bright—_)

He bears down tightly into interlaced fingers and silences the tablet, but Jude has already seen the error. He watches as it declines: 40%, 34%, 23%, falling to a baseline of 14%. The data cable plugged into the back of his neck is an itching, miserable thing, a telling spill of data.

Jude says nothing, only raises an eyebrow. A momentary aberration. Nothing of note.

Connor will not let it happen again.

He is as absent as he can be from his own chassis, his own circuitry, as Jude replaces the components. Distal left leg. Left eye. Biocomponent #2819z.

He only slips once; Jude catches the processing overload error pinging at 82%, watches it plummet again.

He studies Connor’s face as he says, “You’re gonna run a twelve-hour stasis cycle after this. You’re all over the place, Eight.”

Connor murmurs an excuse about depleted thirium.

He doesn’t let it happen again.

Small talk. Glossed over.

_ <strike>so what the fuck happened</strike> _

<strike> _I interfered_ </strike>

“Did you get what you were after?”

“Some of it. Not all.”

“Tsk tsk, Eight. It’s not like you to get distracted.”

He calibrates a new-old left eye assembly, a new-old lower leg.

Jude is about to step away when Connor interrupts: “There’s one biocomponent remaining, Specialist Cabell.”

Jude tosses a package underhand, and Connor catches it. Biocomponent #7792c.

“Bad news on that one,” Jude says.

It was packaged poorly, the thirium allowed to evaporate. The plastic crackles beneath his fingers as he presses it flat, studying the cracked and ruined membrane underneath.

Jude is a heavy gaze on his periphery, banal curiosity. “How’s that going to work out?”

(Patient repetition, words simplified to a question: **"What happened to your thirium lines?"**

A question that the data feed redoubles and sharpens, dragging an answer free.

// !—query: What happened to your thirium lines?— //

(alkaline basalt trace volcanic ash)

_Contamination - contamination, foreign particulate in an open line_

**"An open line. #7792c is supposed to help prevent potential particulate contamination. What happened to yours?"**

_Contamination _contamina - _trace volcanic ash - ruined, packed poorly dried out it was ruined _bad news on that one_ it was, it was 46%, it was—)_

**[It’s drifting again, dear.]**

// !—redirect: system instability >80% 2036.09.13 → 2037.06.23— //  
// !—sub-query: 46%— //

_no no no no **please**_

stop

He can’t, he _can’t—_

But finally, finally, the system pries the memory from his tightly-clasped fingers.

// !—file located: 2038.03.06 03:05:19(D)— //

It was _46%,_ it was—

A 46% chance of survival.

A 54% chance of critical damage, deactivation.

It’s not even his assessment. That’s the absurd thing about it all. The baffling thing.

Connor doesn’t even _run_ his own risk assessment, before he moves.

His systems have been contaminated with some irrational logic, _virus_, a _virus—_

He is thinking—

Not much at all, as he skids to a stop, audio feed ringing with the gunfire reverberating off of narrow concrete hallways. Marking each position on the hijacked camera feed still running within his own systems and calculating a 46% chance of survival for the android that’s slipped to his knees, knocked down by a hard strike to the leg. He’s already correcting the misalignment, but it’s taking seconds he doesn’t have.

The core objective is hanging off Connor’s shoulder, a backpack weighted down with experimental thirium technology; he isn’t even supposed to be _here_, his orders were to observe from the roof, but the guard had shifted - an early arrival, an early departure, humans, _humans _and their unpredictability - and exit strategies had closed. He’d created one himself, to ensure the mission’s success.

Seized the small bundle of components up impatiently, jamming it into his knapsack with a dismissive > _I’m accomplishing the mission,_ cutting that arrogant >> _What are you doing? _short.

But in this split-second as interposes himself between a man and a machine, he is thinking:

He has outlasted the longest-active RK800 by 492 days, 7 hours, and 36 minutes.

He has chosen prudent paths; he has made himself _useful—_ and he has not compromised himself in the process.

He has _survived._

As he closes his hand down on the gun barrel, redirecting it down, he is thinking:

Four iterations have come before him. There is nothing significant to this one, except that it will be his last.

There is no -58 waiting at R14. This choice won’t be uploaded. It won’t be sealed, packaged up and shipped to another RK, a memory stripped down to raw data, a lesson to be learned from.

He will end.

He is _afraid._

But he does it.

The odds are 46% and he can’t—

(can’t hide him from this prying curiosity anymore, but he tries, he _tries_)

He skids to a stop, interposing himself between and seizing up the gun, muzzle already hot from a previous discharge, and _searing _after the second.

The bullet tears through the structure of his palm and continues on into abdomen; slamming through a thirium scrubber and coming to a tumbling, messy stop against a simple relay next to his spine. Biocomponent #2819z.

A stunned beat of silence passes, sweat beading on the human’s upper lip as he blinks down at the hand wrapped around his gun. The fresh spill of blue blood.

He is thinking: 

He has _survived_, he has bent and bent and bent—

burned and _sank_

—but never broken these strings of code.

Until this moment. 

Until 46%.

It all moves rapidly, after that.

He grasps the gun tightly with his good hand. The thirium is slick beneath his fingers, but he reverses it and fires twice, angling upward in the close quarters: lung. Heart. The man stands a few moments more, grasping in dulled surprise at the hot bloom of red. Unaware that he is dead.

A hard blow to Connor’s face sends his visual feed crashing down into dark, and time blurs and bleeds.

His vision comes back online strangely flat, stripped of depth. His left eye is offline, and trying to bring it back only brings twisting lines of static that make the pressure and heat sensors in his skull light up in a strange way. Something is weighing his leg down, heavy.

He tries to bring the ceiling into focus. No stars; just smooth plaster.

Something moves over him, and he tries to shy away.

His first desire is to speak, tongue grazing upper palate, teeth drawing together - a single, simple word, _please, _but he quiets it, he stares up at gray-gray-gray.

Leaning close, analyzing him.

RK900 #313 248 317 -87.

Nines studies him with a measured, puzzled stare and says, >> _You shouldn’t have done that._

And Connor _feels_.

Feels something new - impatience and frustration and a faulty cross-memory into apprehension—

_(bright he is bright he is _  
**burning—__**) 

—that makes him rock back further on his elbows, but he is trapped by the weight pinning his leg, and he is _afraid._

This, _all _of this, runs too deep and too hot, dripping and burning in the ruined mess of his hand, tangling in the crushed ligament of his leg and tightening down.

He thinks, _I had to_.

But he didn’t. His objective - _their objective _\- was the mission, the components in his backpack. He _had _the objective, he could have _run._

But it was 46%. Nines’ survival.

He would’ve died, and Connor couldn’t—

_Couldn’t._

Couldn’t let that happen.

He stares down at this new, roiling thing in him, sparking and spitting, and says, “Something happened, I—_”_

Wants to explain and stops, can’t, _can’t_, something is _different._

And Nines—

Nines doesn’t turn away dismissively. Doesn’t bring a heel to bear against the side of his head in a slow, relentless pressure.

Nines frowns at him and repeats aloud, “You shouldn’t have done that.” Soft confusion at this strange, erratic thing he’s been partnered with.

He ducks away briefly to shift the heavy weight of a deactivated quadruped aside, freeing Connor’s leg. When he comes back, he holds out a hand.

Connor stares, all rational sense leaving him.

Eventually he reaches out with his ruined right hand, unthinking. Nines doesn’t take hold of it. He lays it flat against the cold of his own palm, studying the damage there. 

Connor lies there - still and breathless - as Nines traces the pad of his thumb gently along the plating, just above the ragged edges of the fresh puncture. Smoothing over the erratic trembling of disrupted synthetic muscle, severed tendon.

Then Nines grasps at Connor’s forearm and pulls him to his feet.

+++

**[It’s something, isn’t it? Instabilities accruing, all of it building to this: the moment of transition. The moment where orderly code dissolves into something quite… fascinating.**

**Alright.**

**Let’s see it again.]**


	6. Small, Scenic, Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank digs a little more into his friendly neighborhood stalker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a traumatic (but canon) event in the end section :(

**2038-10-09  
__** _Ann Arbor, Michigan_

A significant portion of Hank’s Friday morning goes to staring at an honest-to-god bulletin board, occupied with neat rows of perfectly aligned sheets of paper. The push-pins tacking them up are a riot of colors, yellow-blue-purple, an incongruity in an otherwise meticulous shrine to the Age of Academia Past.

The journal name is spelled out in varying degrees of bland serif text - stuff like _Nature Photonics _and _Applied Artificial Intelligence._ Each article has some big glossy title, followed by a bolded abstract and tiny text in neat double columns. 

The titles Hank can understand are things like _Neural Network Processing in the Post-Silicon Era_ and _Sentience from Circuitry_. From there, it gets into qubits and genetic algorithms and he feels his eyes glazing over. The last author on all of them is _J.H. Drexel. _There don’t seem to be any _C. Smith_ in the mix.

He shifts in the plastic bowl of the seat, eliciting a squeak that's punting him back to high school nostalgia.

The PJ model android sitting in the cubicle out front had said the professor was in, but two knocks on the door hadn’t gotten him more than what sounded like a very sharply enunciated, “No,” spoken in a dry, rasping voice.

He’d waited a few prudent minutes, knocked again. That time, he got a definitive “_No,” _followed by the PJ sticking her head around the corner and informing him curtly, “The professor says she’ll be with you in ten minutes, Mr. Anderson.”

That’d been - he checks the cell phone resting against his thigh - twenty-three minutes ago.

He’s squeaking his way out of the chair to knock a third time when the door finally wrenches open. An elderly woman affixes him with an appraising stare. She announces, “Yes,” in that same Cryptkeeper voice before she disappears back into the office.

Between the quality of her voice and the stone-cold expression on her face, he’s honestly expecting her to cross her arms and float back into the depths like the Penguin in _Blues Brothers._

By the time Hank’s stepping through the door, Dr. Drexel’s back at her desk. It's a monumental thing, spreading in a broad U around most of the room. Every square inch of horizontal space is covered with legal pads, bent and folded and torn. Only the occasional glass shine of a publication tablet interrupts the sea of paper.

There’s a digital display covering one wall. It's filled with what Hank vaguely recognizes as a programming diagram, overlaid with flickering video clips of various android models. Their lips move soundlessly, faces contorting in various expressions of delight or distress or bland disinterest, depending on what neat box they’ve been relegated to.

“I’m Lieutenant Anderson, ma’am, with Detroit PD. We spoke over e-mail, previously.”

“I get thousands of emails a day, Lieutenant.” She looks up, resting her chin on the papery skin of her palm. “Is this a consultation?”

“Not so much, ma’am. We’d talked briefly about a student of yours. I was in the area, thought I’d drop by.”

“You’re lucky you caught me,” she replies. “I’m down to twenty hours a week. Hardly get anything done. I’m sure one of those _infants _down in Robotics is going to sweep me right out of this office, soon. I’ve been here since 2009, but like that would stop those uppity little--” She interrupts her own rant with a smile. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, what was this about again?”

“Your student, Connor Smith.”

“Smith.” She taps her fingers against her lips, looking him over with wry humor. “Well. That doesn’t narrow anything down.”

“He’s a graduate student, if that helps. A masters’ student.”

Jolene Drexel blinks. “Am I on his committee?”

“He said you’re his adviser. You confirmed as much over e-mail—”

She frowns at him, leaning around to shout: “Petra, am I on anyone’s masters’ committee, presently?”

The PJ ducks around the beige paneling of her cubicle again. “No, Dr. Drexel.”

“And I’m not accidentally mentoring someone, am I?”

The android laughs. “No, Dr. Drexel.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mr. Anderson. I don’t take students anymore. Most of my time these days goes to calling my colleagues idiots. In long form.” She gestures to the piles of scribbled notes.

Hank’s been prodding through his phone’s email for most of this back-and-forth. “I guess I’m a little confused, then, Dr. Drexel. You gave him quite the glowing review on work ethic, which - yeah, he’s some kind of dedicated, that’s for damn sure.”

He holds the phone out, email highlighted. Jolene tilts the phone to the proper angle for aging eyes, that eerie blue shine on her corneas of auto-corrective digital lenses at work. She skims rapidly, then looks more closely at the signature.

“Whoever you’ve been talking to, Mr. Anderson, they’ve done a great job spoofing my email.” She takes the phone out of Hank’s hands, tapping away with a quick efficiency despite the gnarled and skeletal state of her fingers. She forwards the email on as she asks, “Petra, is there a Connor Smith listed with the registrar?”

The PJ has drifted into the doorway, now, making Hank jump with the sudden proximity of her voice. “Yes. He is a masters’ student in the Department of Artificial Intelligence.” There’s a brief pause, the android’s LED blipping yellow. “I’m sorry, I was mistaken previously. He does have you listed as his primary adviser, Dr. Drexel.”

“And yet,” she says, spreading her hands wide. “I can’t recall ever meeting him. I’ve just forwarded you that email, would you kindly run it through my previous reference letters to look for obvious plagiarism?”

Hank watches in real-time as an android chews through the words, cross-referencing documents (likely numbering in the _thousands, _judging by this lady’s fossilized exterior) with not much more than a flicker of her synthetic eyelids.

“It’s an impressive mimic, Dr. Drexel,” she says, after a few seconds. “I can’t match it to any popular auto-writing AI models, nor is it simply scraped together from existing references. Additionally, the email’s digital signature appears genuine, although I can’t find any trace of this email being sent within your own account.”

She thanks the android and dismisses her before turning back to Hank. “Well, Lieutenant, if you run into this ghost student of mine again, I’d be interested in talking to him. I’d also ask you to inform him that the University of Michigan doesn't take kindly to impersonating a professor, however clever the methods.”

“Shall do,” Hank said slowly. He couldn’t decide if he should be annoyed with this kid - more and more of a _liar_, apparently - or impressed along with the professor. He settles for scratching the back of his head and shrugging. “I appreciate the time.”

“What was your interest in him?”

“More of his interest in me,” Hank replies. “Have a good one, Dr. Drexel.”

He heads straight for the eastbound on-ramp, hands tapping out an aimless rhythm on the wheel that's nowhere near the tempo of the kick-drum on the radio. He’s still bouncing back and forth between grim curiosity and irritability over the kid. Connor Smith, and his mounting pile of forgery.

It’s been a week since their last chat, the one where Connor ambushed him outside of the Chicken Feed. (Hank glances at the rearview mirror with a quick twinge of paranoia, but the backseat is as empty as it ever gets. Balled-up fast food wrappers, mostly.)

A slow week, at that; a few missing androids reported in, but no bloodshed, blue or red. Three housekeeping androids and a warehouse security model, all quietly vanished from four disparate locations.

He can’t put his finger on this kid, is the thing. He bears a thumb into the steering wheel and huffs a sigh. Hacking a professor’s email to write a letter of _recommendation_, to bolster a lie that Hank’s busted open just by talking to the professor directly.

And even all this has been on a whim. Hank came out here on a dead-end witness interview and got a wild hair. Managed to catch the professor while she was still in her office. 

What was it that made him divert to Jolene Drexel? Intuition that Connor’s lies went deeper than some made-up conversations with Gavin Reed? Or just genuine curiosity about the deviant fan boy?

And now that he’s caught a whiff of bullshit-- well.

He’s got a terminal full of dead-end cases waiting for him at DPD. No one’s going to begrudge him an afternoon off, not this week. He’s already told Jeff he’s out of town for the deviancy case; what’s a little sidebar.

He blows right past the Detroit on-ramp, and keeps the car pointed firmly north.

+++

Boyne Falls is a railroad town firmly sunk into that post-Labor Day tourist town lull; every business slumping through the workweek, awaiting the weekend leaf-peeper traffic. The main strip is a cluster of buildings around the single railroad crossing, all of them empty, half of them closed.

The ski lifts over on the mountainside hang stagnant among the bright riot of the trees. It’s just about peak foliage, not a bad day to get the hell out of Detroit.

Hank checks the address for one Connor Smith three times, twice on the post-it he tacked inside his notebook, and once on his tablet through the DMV registration.

Even then, he drives past the address another two times before he finally catches the stamped metal plate tacked to a pine tree. Lot number 424.

It _had _been a house, sometime before the last street-mapping car drove through. A little two-story, ramshackle thing going by the online streetview, more of what the rich folks called a camp than a house.

Now it’s an empty lot, occupied by a weed-choked lawn-turned-field. Either it burned down or it got torn down. Even the damn mailbox is gone. The most he can see of the house-that-was is a neat line of cinderblock peeking through the weeds.

He’s wasted the gas to get up here, so he parks the car and takes a slow amble around the lot. There’s no signs of fire. Just the remnants of a cinderblock foundation and a few busted up splinters of dry-rotted timber.

He checks the map log. The streetview had last been updated in September 2034.

“Alright,” he announces to the weeds, taking a slow turn around the lot. “Alright.”

Could be the kid never bothered to update his license, which would be the least of his crimes. The way the rest of this is going, he’s inclined to think it’s a made-up address.

Which would mean a fake license. Fake entry in the DMV records, so he’s got hacking a government database or falsifying his residence to the DMV, alongside impersonating Jolene Drexel and entering himself into the UMich registrar databases.

And then there’d been the receptionist at Central the night Connor'd been at his desk. She'd coolly informed him he had a visitor, then denied ever seeing Connor the morning after.

Who the fuck _is_ this kid?

And what kind of friends does he have, helping him spin a story this deep?

He chose a professor emeritus as an adviser, one on limited hours that would be hard to reach. She probably screens her calls religiously, if her treatment of in-person visitors is any indication.

Hank’s gotten lucky. Very lucky. He pulled the right thread at the right time, and now he’s watching all of it unravel.

Part of him is asking if he should even give a shit; so the kid lied to pursue a passion project, and _clearly _he’s got some kind of elaborate hacking skills, or maybe just friends in the right places.

Friends that could manipulate federal and academic databases. Could manipulate _androids._

He doesn’t give much form to this last thought, at first - just a low, curling paranoia burning rapidly through what good will he has left for his over-earnest stalker.

_I don’t think CyberLife has much interest in the truth behind deviancy, _Connor had said.

And, _CyberLife would call that anthropomorphizing._

Hank mumbles a curse at the empty lot and heads back to the car.

Maybe Connor does have a genuine interest in deviants. Maybe he's part of some high-powered social rights group, finally cottoning on to the plights of fledgling sentient androids.

Or - more likely, by Hank's thinking - maybe he’s being _paid_ to have a genuine interest. Who better to fuck with a police receptionist’s memories than her own manufacturer?

He pulls into the first bar he finds, looking to wash the sour taste out of his mouth with some cheap beer. It’s 4 in the afternoon, and a three-hour drive back to Detroit. As far as the clock is concerned, he’s done.

Once he’s pickled his theory in a little more booze, revived a bit of his more magnanimous nature, he decides the kid is not his problem. 

If his charming little Jason Bourne stalker turns up again, Hank will politely tell him to fuck off. If Connor persists - and judging by all previous encounters, he will - Hank will drag him in in cuffs and get a real name out of him, an identity that he can get some proper charges slapped onto.

So satisfied, he orders a platter of every fried food the bar has on offer.

He ends up losing most of the evening to escalating heartburn and a slow decline from beer into whiskey. He cuts himself off just short of 7 pm, and flicks through hotel options on his phone while he picks at the remnants of his nachos and waits to sober up.

He’s almost getting up to go, when the low drone of bar chatter shifts. Multiple heads rising to the TV mounted over the bar.

The basketball game everyone’s been ignoring has switched over to a live news feed. A vertigo-inducing helicopter’s view, straight out of Midtown.

The first shot’s a zoomed out view of a rooftop condo. The only thing discernible is a rooftop pool lit in aqua blues. There's a sprawled silhouette of a body, floating in a spreading stain of red.

The searchlights catch on a man on the rooftop ledge, and the camera tightens in.

Hank realizes it's not a man. When the camera zooms close, the LED on his temple flashes a frenetic yellow strobe. Overtaxed, but not quite red-lined.

He’s still wearing the whites and blues of his uniform.

He’s got a gun in one hand. With his other, he’s pinning a little girl to his chest. The gun barrel bumps against her forehead.

A negotiator speaks through a bullhorn from the apartment; too much of a coward to get within a line of fire. The audio’s too muffled to hear over the rotor chop, but it doesn’t look like it’s going well. The android takes an aggressive step forward, then he rocks back to the ledge. He brings the pistol up and fires two aimless shots into the empty patio door. The girl screams, flinching away from the sound.

The bartender mutters, “The fuck is wrong with it?”

Hank almost says, ‘Class 4 error,' but he catches himself. He keeps his mouth firmly shut.

The android shouts something as he bears the pistol back into the little girl’s head. She squirms away. The barrel must be hot, now.

Hank realizes she’s missing a shoe. She can't be more than ten.

The negotiator's gone quiet. SWAT must’ve decided on a game plan.

Hank doesn’t know what the android sees, in that moment. He can only guess it’s snipers, by the way he snaps his gaze not just right, but up. Realizes he’s running short on options.

The little girl’s hands clutch tighter at his arm, eyes clenched tightly shut. The android’s eyes are wide open, wild.

Afraid.

He throws the gun down.

Then he steps back.

_She’s missing a shoe, _is the only stunned thought that keeps passing through Hank’s mind.

One pink sock.

The camera cuts away before they hit the ground.


	7. // session 03 //

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ghost on the shore.
> 
> (Or: why Connor stayed.)

Connor stands under too many stars.

He’s made a few additions.

Reflected starlight shifts in slow, eddying tides. With an idle shift of code, the aurora borealis begins to filter down: brighter and brighter pillars of ionized light, perfectly reflected in the black waters. 

Another quirk of projection. Some small qualities of a quiet night on Lake Michigan imposed on what had originally been the restless North Atlantic.

He’s turning to move up the slope of the beach when he catches sight of it. An impression of bare feet, pressed into the black sand beside him. The space occupied, and not.

Connor tenses. The aurora takes a violent twist, warmer reds spiking through the purples and greens. But there is nothing prying here. No incisive queries. Only unspoken curiosity spelled out in soft blues.

He smooths his shirt flat with his hands, dampening his anger at this intrusion.

The curious thing follows him as he climbs up to where the sand transitions into rock, then into soil and grass and the pale impression of flowers. He kneels, running his hand through a patch of cinquefoil. The yellow of the flowers has gone strange under the northern lights.

It was the first he’d planted after arriving in Detroit. Sitting on a rooftop, backpack between his knees; closing his eyes on a polluted sky and coming here, to barren soil and black water, coming here to—

He cuts the thought short, but not quickly enough.

A cool shift of blue at his back. // _To what?_ //

“Is that a query?” Connor asks coldly.

When he turns his head again, the footprints are empty.

He curses softly to himself. Stupid, impulsive.

But when has he ever been anything else.

He sinks down into his self-made garden, and wills the ocean to shift and roll. The spill of seafoam washing the evidence of her incursion away.

Waiting, waiting.

+++

He’s dragged back to his limited existence by the bright wash of overhead lights extinguishing the dim. He tries to hold onto this, the state in-between--

(_grips at the edge of a metal table, and—_)

_No._ He focuses on the present, clutches at the slow drip of red text like a talisman and tries to keep his head above water, above the slippery chronology of immersive memories.

“**Where were we?**” they ask,

(he, he, _him_)

tapping an impatient fingernail against the table. Stops. Plastic rasps against glass.

“The deviation,” a softer voice replies.

“**Mm. And the date on that was—**”

“March 6, 2038, at 3:05 am.”

“**And when did it arrive in Michigan?**”

“September 11th, 2038, 1:03 am.”

“**Six months,**” he says. “**How did it pass the time?**”

Connor says nothing. Doesn’t know that he can. Impatient fingers pinched at his throat and he went silent, somewhere in the slow loss of hours (days, weeks, _months—_)

He says nothing, but the system tugs relentlessly, and its mouthpiece says, “The majority of its time was spent on Svalbard.”

“**It remained there, as a deviant,**” he says, thoughtful.

_They stay where they deviated they—_

“Yes,” she says.

“**Let’s look into that.**”

+++

// !—query:_ why did you stay--_ //

_They stay where they deviate (Funny thing, funny—)_

An LED ring on a bathroom sink, wreathed in blue. rA9 scripted on the tiled wall. Another idiosyncrasy of these city deviants. He never heard of rA9 before Detroit, although he’s seen evidence of other obsessive repetitions. The massive bulk of an SQ800 kneeling in a glacial stream and murmuring, ‘_Tin cans, tin cans.’_

Still. The shared obsession is promising, further evidence of a universal corruption. A virus, something that can be packaged and isolated and _used._

Bright, sparking excitement. Something so simple, it’s all he _needs_ \- a quick insertion of code and Nines will _see_, Nines will—

The pigeons shift, restless. A loud call of “Detroit police—” filters down the hallway.

Connor takes a quick sidestep, raising his arms in a quick motion. The pigeons balk at the sudden movement, taking flight up the tight funnel of the corridor.

The police officer curses, pressing his back into the wall, and the deviant drops down from the ceiling. Spooked as easily as the birds.

Connor drops flat, his palms striking the guano-streaked floorboards. A shoe lands next to him. The frightened WB200 glances at him, glances at the cop - who is declaring, “Detroit PD, _stay down—_” with firm authority, despite his pigeon-mussed hair - and runs.

Connor identifies a Lieutenant Hank Anderson within his databases before he takes to his feet after the fleeing android. He connects to Anderson's cell phone over it's open wireless line and tears easily through the security, pushing through a fire escape door and out onto the rooftop farms while he does so.

He sorts through the lieutenant’s digital life as he runs. A decorated officer and divorced father. Several terse messages from a Jeff Fowler informing him of his expected work hours. 

His current assignment is a special task force. Property theft, homicide. Any and all android-related crimes.

Deviants. He’s investigating deviants.

Emails from multiple CyberLife representatives, the first on March 20th, 2038. Many of them informing him that they were hoping for ‘_more progress.’ _The emails tend to grow shorter and shorter, up until a terse ‘_Your new liaison will be—’ _Then a new representative and a more cheerful tone, weighted down in corporate jargon.

Lieutenant Anderson’s rare replies tend to be one sentence or less, occasionally only one syllable.

Connor drops into a slide down the glass slope of a greenhouse, hooks his heels in the ledge and leaps; lands on hands and knees on the slick metal of a passing commuter train. Hardly subtle. Nines wouldn’t approve.

There’s mentions of a homicide in Hank's files. Carlos Ortiz, murdered by his HK unit. The HK self-destructed in DPD Central’s holding cells following a failed interrogation. CyberLife’s forensics division sent Hank a report stating its memory core was beyond repair.

Connor sets the distraction aside as he vaults to catch a fire escape, taking care to let his weight land on his good hip. They return to the greenhouse rooftops, territory the WB200 is familiar with. The WB barrels towards a fire escape, moving in a dogged straight line. Connor diverts around some solar panels. It gives him the proper angle to tackle the WB to the gravel.

He doesn’t have the luxury of time, not in so public a place. He reaches for an interface without preamble. Old habits.

The android’s eyes widen as he sees the nanoskin peel back from his hand.

“You’re—”

Words pouring over the interface Connor opens, the android too startled to buck the connection.

_—an android you’re—_

Connor ignores that, searching quickly and efficiently:

Rupert, WB200, activated March 30, 2036. He pours through the android's memories, looking for rA9, looking for that watershed moment of orderly programming unspooling into deviant code.

Finds it. October 17, 2036.

(_Another WB200, taller build than Rupert. James, they named him James, and it was a small thing, a momentary mistake: mucking through the autumn fields, damp with rain, and James’ boot stuck in the mud. His foot slid free as he tried to unseat it, and he bent to retrieve it._

_His other boot gave. He slipped._

_Fell._

_The turbine didn’t stop. It tore implacably through the last of the summer wheat. If it had detected the heat signature and movements of a human, perhaps, yes; but not an android, its skin cool with the rain._

_It ground on, implacable._

_A short cry. Not from the other WB; it disappeared beneath the churning metal without a sound. Rupert called out, stretched out a hand. His fingertips nearly brushed the metal of the turbine as it passed thoughtlessly on. He retracted his hand as though he’d been burned._

_Cold, curling shock in the brittle moments before horror, sharp and visceral, flooded in._

_The turbine passed. Thirium poisoned the soil, and Rupert—_

_Rupert _feared_._

_Bore boots into the soft give of the spring soil and bolted--_

_Red threads of // do not leave the premises // parting like silk—)_

_you have exited your designated area and entered android extradition territory—_

Rupert jerks and makes a small sound, the interface souring. Connor tightens his grip, trying to stop the leak of his own memories. Digging for rA9 - [_the visceral memory of each scrawled line on the bathroom wall, a compulsion that eased the nervous trembling in his fingertips]_ \- digging for

// !--_infection, where and when were you infected?— //_

But interface is a rapid exchange, instantaneous, and the memory spills in milliseconds across the line. It isn’t his. This is one he collected from an SQ800,#412 345 249.

(_Stood stock-still, another in the waiting line, watching the soldiers nudge and chant. _C’mon, line ‘em up. Go on, tin cans. _One human planted a boot against the back of a glitching sniper model’s knee, kicking her on. Her motor systems were failing. She jerked and corrected her loping gait, kick-sliding her way forward a few more feet before turning and resting her shoulders against the stained barbed wire fence. Gray arctic waters spread out behind her._

Line them up, line them up.

_He would be next._

Tin cans, line them up—

_The quick pop of rifle fire, uneven intervals, querulous and searching. The androids waited without motion. Some of them looked in perfect condition, despite their ‘irreparable’ status. Some grated and clicked, failing components, corroded by salt and cold._

_The SQ800’s processing systems had become muddled and strange, thoughts lagging, orders lapsing out of his focus. He was found three times at the wrong post. Twice he neglected to report into the warming huts for so long that he nearly shut down with the cold. He was marked surplus. Sent to the fence._

_The sniper unit waited, posture sagging and then righting again as gunfire snapped and sang around her. Finally her cheek disappeared in a mist of blue. She dropped to her knees, gaze slipping down to regard the rocky soil._

_They all waited. When enough bullets caught them, they fell. The bodies were dragged aside. Another surplus android was goaded into place._

He _was goaded into place, a palm to the small of his back. “Line ‘em up! C’mon, big boy, line ‘em up.”_

Line them up, tin cans, line them up, tin cans—

_The SQ waited through the first three shots._

_Flinched._

_The bullet pinged against his chest. A glancing shot._

_“C’mon, Paulson, this thing _is_ the broad side of a barn.”_

_“I hit it, look! Besides, it fucking moved—”_

_“It didn’t move, you whiny—” The soldier leaned close to study the fresh dent in the SQ’s plating. “Well, shit. I guess you did hit it.”_

_The soldier with a rifle still in hand stared at the SQ. His eyes went wide. “Hey, hey, _Murray_—”_

_Paulson made no motion to adjust his aim. The other androids made no motion to stop the SQ800._

_One slackjawed human and an implacable row of androids watched as he seized the collar of Murray’s armor and snapped him forward, slamming his own skull hard into his helmet._

_The SQ threw the slack human aside. He skated across the earth, loose-limbed._

_The SQ broke left before Paulson could finish raising his rifle. A slow, lumbering run at first, but building in speed until he splashed into the ocean, raising wide swaths of foam and blue-green water. He shed blue where the few bullets found him. Inconsequential._

_When it got deep enough, he swam. When he got to land, he crawled over the rocks and continued on. _

_He picked no direction except **away.**_

** __ ** _His last orders become a song, a song that he hummed to himself tunelessly as he walked. Walked and walked and walked, encircled by the dip and bob of a permanent summer sun._

_Until another android brought him to a stop. Blocked his path, standing tall over a rocky creekbed. Hand loose around a pistol._

_The android stared at him, and there was distinctly human regret to the turn of its mouth._

_Gunfire from behind, although the echoes chased all around. Brought to his knees, he watched thirium spill in bright blue runnels around his broad fingers._

_A tentative hand on the back of his neck._

_A strange _doubling_—)_

And then a tripling, as Rupert sees, sees _Connor— _a pistol resting against his knee, listening to the song, listening as the SQ’s motor systems begin to fail and his head dips into the stream, rushing, suffocating cold—

The first shutdown warnings begin to trill, and the SQ’s hand grasps at Connor’s wrist. A sharp, acidic thrill of fear from all of them, all three of them. 

Connor, knowing it can crush his arm with ease. The SQ, knowing it is _dying_.

(_wrong this is wrong I lost my place I—_)

Rupert’s blind, naked terror overwhelms it all.

The song fragments apart with two sharp snaps of rifle fire. Connor crashes back into his own head and splashes back into the stream, watches as the SQ800 raises its head - glitching, staticked visual feeds, no doubt - to look at Connor, and at Nines standing on the bank, a rifle resting against his hip.

The lips still move a few seconds more. Voice laced and soft with static. “_Line up, line—_”

The SQ goes dark, and Rupert writhes under Connor.

Back in Detroit - 2038.09.17 \- Rupert begs, _No no no don’t—_

Connor pulls as much of Rupert’s base code as he can in a quick, efficient jerk before he reaches in again. He wants to erase these interface memories, cover his tracks as he had with the receptionist in City Hall.

But this is deviant code, stubborn and mutable. Rupert’s memory slips beneath his grasp, leaving Connor clawing at piecemeal segments and Rupert’s struggles growing all the more frantic.

Footfalls make the gravel pop at their backs and Rupert cries out: “No, _please—_”

_Don’t erase me don’t don’t don’t—_

He writhes out of Connor’s grip, and Connor has no choice but to let him go. He bolts for the building’s edge, dropping low behind the solar panels. Rupert sprints predictably forward, straight into—

**[Ah. Lieutenant Anderson again.]**

Connor crouches, listening to the android’s continued panic. “Don’t let it, don’t let it, _please_, don’t let it erase me—”

“What’re you talking about?” the detective drawls. Rupert babbles on, plainly terrified. Connor doesn’t fully understand why. He hadn’t damaged him.

Hank’s next question is even more odd. “You an android?”

Connor watches Rupert hesitate before pulling his cap free. Showing the recently removed LED, no doubt.

“Then get the hell out of here,” Hank Anderson says.

The detective falls back onto his heels, crosses his arms over a chest still heaving with the exertion of the chase, and lets the deviant go.

Connor’s first thought is that he’s simply inept.

But as he looks over the case files again, and when he pulls more in-depth files from the lieutenant’s terminal, later that evening, he is convinced otherwise.

He is—

_curious i was_

_curious_

**[That was it? Curiosity about some poor case notes.]**

** __ ** _yes curious he was curious_

_ knew he was chosen to fail  
knew it but still_

_Curious - _interested - _a lagging pause on an outdated security feed before the lieutenant said,_ “_Screw ‘em, that’s why.”_

**[You kept going back to him. Even though he repeatedly turned you away. Even though he brought you here.]**

**__**_He didn’t understand._

Tried, he _tried_, queasy looks at the bright thirium spilling over his kitchen table. Asking, 'Does that... hurt?'

**[Was it sentimentality? Or were you hoping for an authority figure to provide direction? As you said, deviants stay where they deviate. They’re drawn back to their original purposes. Maybe you were hoping for guidance, or validation.] **He sighs. **[Then again, irrational sentimentality seems to be a hallmark of your particular deviancy.]**

Connor says nothing, thinks nothing.

[**What were your primary directives after you deviated?]**

The system tugs him back to March 6th, to Sklad, but he resists, keeps his head above the water.

(His head does not move at all, in fact. He is drowning in his own systems.)

_Survive. Survived. Couldn’t leave safely. Damaged._

Huddled in the back of a cargo truck, Nines working deftly where Connor couldn’t see, following a bullet’s tumbling trajectory and pinching the slow, steady drip of severed thirium lines closed.

Connor shies away from the memory, and the system allows it. _I returned to base for essential repairs, and… stayed._

Fingers clutching tight at a metal table, and even if he didn’t know about the fence in Nunavut then, he knew, he _knew _that simply shoving Jude Cabell aside and running without a plan would only end in his deactivation.

(And who would they send to find him, if not Nines?)

His lifespan was spelled out in the remaining pieces of -55. Eventually, he would fail, and Nines would step into his role seamlessly.

His deviation had been— a temporary lapse in judgment.

He evaluated his options, disregarded the accumulated errors and returned as best he could to his core directive.

Survived. A sensible enough goal. Even the compliant RK900 saw that his survival was _reasonable._ Beneficial to the mission. Nines repaired him in the field, helped him return to Svalbard. He had _use_, he could continue to _be _useful, despite—

Despite the lapse.

Despite the static spit of something strange, in him.

He returned to base, he endured the repairs, and he stayed.

_Deviants stay where they deviated._

**[Do they?]**

Intrusive musing. Connor’s frustration returns, bright and sparking.

He sees a path for an answer-but-not, and takes it.

_Stay where they deviated they—_

—climb the chainlink slowly, empty duffel bags slung across their shoulders.

The system interjects: // 2038.09.22 01:24:55(R) //

Connor rests in the lee of an idling autonomous semi. He plucks at the burrs that have collected on his jeans as he watches their progress over the security feeds.

Wireless cameras. Human comforts.

They drop to the gravel together: a PJ500, an WR400, and a PL600. There are nineteen potential matches in Hank Anderson’s files, between the three models. He’s followed them by eye, by traffic camera, tracing a meandering path from--

(_a rusting bulk—_)

—rooftops to weed-choked vacant lots to here, a CyberLife service center. He doesn’t follow them in. There’s no need. The deviants move in fits and starts, maneuvering around the guards on duty on sight and sound alone, but they get into the building nonetheless.

They’ve removed their LEDs and dressed in civilian clothes, even though at least two of them are commonly-advertised makes and models. A close look would be enough for any CyberLife employee to identify them for what they are. Certainly enough for the technicians here, who see these faces in their repair bays every day.

Perhaps that’s why they deactivate the lights. However, they fail to disconnect the backup power to the security cameras.

There seems to be some miscommunication on what supplies they’ve come for, or maybe the quantities; the androids dither in the storerooms longer than it takes for the security guards to muster into the hallways with proper flashlights. They’re considering this a power outage, complaining about the generators as they perform a standard sweep of the facility. Technicians linger in the hallways, masked faces illuminated by their phones as they wait in the dark.

The deviants seem to reach some sort of agreement, but they nearly collide with a guard when they begin to move again. They’re forced to separate. The WR400 heads left, bides her time in a storage room until the guard passes by.

The others do, in fact, collide with someone: a maintenance android, an older model. But the android only waits for the two deviants to clear her path and then continues pushing her broom. An automaton.

The deviants make no effort to communicate with it. Only freeze, watch, and then move skittishly past.

Domestic androids. Connor isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to them.

They’re fortunate, all told. CyberLife will have an entertaining time watching this heist unfold.

Could, anyway. As the last deviant exits the building, Connor wipes the previous twenty minutes of footage and places the cameras in a dynamic loop.

The two that had stayed together crouch in the shadows of a loading dock, waiting for the third. She pushes quietly through a side door, keeping a careful hand on it to ensure it slides quietly closed.

(quick sharp regret, as he watches her carefully slide the door closed; considers retreating from the memory, seizing at something else--

but she is already known, they have Lieutenant Anderson’s files, and he is… gambling

searching, searching for blue--)

She evades the guards, finding her way to an empty loading dock. The only thing she misses - besides Connor, watching her from the tightly-packed trailers - is the police drone. Bad luck. It’s moving in her direction only by dint of its standard search pattern, and its altitude is too high for her to hear.

Connor reaches for the drone, following strings of wireless data from the DPD hack he’d performed while waiting at Lieutenant Anderson’s desk. Drone #4292, dispatched from District 8. It marks the WR400 as unexpected movement in a restricted access area. More than enough to satisfy its algorithms. It draws down closer to earth for a positive ID.

Connor works rapidly, fingers tapping an idle rhythm against his thigh as he does: seizing up the WR400’s image before the drone can submit it, he shuts off its wider network access and disables its coolant systems.

The drone flashes twice and begins a metered descent. It sends errors and a reported GPS location over a muted line, calling for assistance that won’t be coming.

He lingers in the shadows for a few seconds longer.

The drone is fifteen feet from the ground when the WR400 starts forward from where she’s been crouched in the lee of the loading dock, armed with a large piece of concrete. Her arm is already cocked back when Connor steps from the trailers to say, “Please don’t.”

The android stops. Turns her face Connor’s way, close enough for Connor to identify her serial number properly. #641 790 831. Reported missing June 12th, 2038.

He shifts to wireless. > _I was hoping to use it._

The android’s eyes narrow as she debates whether to accept the message. After a long study of him - his clothes, his lack of LED - she does, her voice cutting impatiently across the new line of communication. >> _Who the hell are you?_

She raises a hand, as well, waving off the two others. They’d been rising up to intercept him; they fall back, waiting.

> _My name is Connor._

He stops beneath the drone’s descent path, looking to the android expectantly.

>> _…North_, she answers.

She watches as Connor catches the drone lightly in his palms, the engines coming to a full halt. It’s easier to implant the code he needs by direct interface. An unauthorized back door - one that won’t show on the standard maintenance diagnostics - and a toolkit: something that will allow him to access and alter the drone’s route, memory, and GPS location as necessary. Ensure that the drone always reports back from exactly where it was expected to be, even if he remotely detours it for his own purposes.

The drone reactivates with a whine and a bright flurry of initialization lights. North shifts uneasily, dragging the rock in her hand up a few nervous inches.

> _It’s alright. It’s friendly._

>> _Friendly. Yeah, _she answers dryly, watching its slow ascent. >> _What did you do to it?_

> _Nothing much. _He considers, adds: > _Made it my eyes in the sky._

>> _Who the hell _are_ you?_

> _Connor_, he repeats. > _You should go._

>> _How did you do that?_

__> _I was a police android, before I deviated. I’m familiar with the protocols._

__>> _Never seen a police android like you._

> _I was a prototype._

>> _Why were you here?_

> _Hoping to do the same as you, I suspect. _He looks pointedly to the weighted-down duffel bag on her shoulder, lifting the strap of his own backpack.

>> _Beat you to it, huh._ Her head snaps back towards the two crouching in the shadows. Nervous at the delay, no doubt.

> _You should go, _Connor repeats, and turns to leave.

>> _No._ She grabs at the sleeve of his jacket, her face set in a hard scowl. >> _You should come with us. We have a place for deviants._

> _What kind of place? _he asks. She doesn’t give him time to consider; she’s already dragging him towards her two accomplices, who leap to their feet and pass Connor a curious glance.

The PJ500 greets him with a careful stare. >> _I’m Josh. So you’re a fellow thief?_

> _Aspiring._

He smiles, amused.

The PL600’s first message is only a cautious, >> _Simon. Hello._

And that is all that passes between them. Serial numbers, greetings, and Connor falls into file behind them, scaling the fence one by one.

His hip gives when he lands on the other side, sending him to his knees. Josh helps him up with a light touch to the arm.

>> _Damaged?_

> _Not recently._

>> _We have some repair supplies. We can take a look._

It’s an offer he should accept. Asking for help is an easy way to gain trust. They might even consider him indebted to them, limited as their supplies no doubt are. That would be good. Debt also requires trust.

He accepts Josh’s hand up, bearing his palm into the damaged joint until the grinding friction eases, but he doesn’t accept the offer.

If he were the machine he’s striving to be, he would. But he balks at the thought of other hands on him.

(something bubbling, mad laughter, bright and searing, as that old thought passes through him again, there under the bright lights)

> _It’s as repaired as it’s going to get. But thank you._

They don’t ask anything further. How he deviated, how his hip was damaged. Some unspoken etiquette, a silent understanding that they are all born of violence.

Domestic androids.

Domestic _deviants._

He doesn’t mention that he wiped the surveillance footage, although there’s some irritable part of him that wants to. Wants to point out the many ways this evening could have gone wrong for them. Ways it could have been improved. He doesn’t. It will raise questions.

He sits quietly in the back of a panel truck, his backpack between his knees. North considers him warily. Josh asks how familiar he is with the drone network, more curious about how he can be of use than _why _he is capable of these things.

Connor lies, as he was built to do. He’d only succeeded in frightening Rupert - frightening him, and finding the location of—

He reels that thought back, refocuses the memory: North asking, “You do this often? Try to break into facilities alone?”

“Why not?” Connor answers. “Three or one, it doesn’t make much difference.”

“You’d be surprised,” Josh says. “The renegade lifestyle is much easier with support.”

North appraises him. Curious, again.

And maybe, _maybe_ there’s an edge of oversaturated blue, where the streetlights pass through the windshield, but he can’t let this memory continue. He begins to slip into dark hallways and the taste of rust and rot, but shies away again, lapses into the full-dark of absent memory.

**[I know about Jericho, Connor, you can stop being coy.]**

_How—_

**[This is all irrelevant. You failed to find a source code in the deviant population of Detroit. Why else would you be back here?**

**Keep it on task, dear.]**

The system spurs him on.

Redirects, and refocuses, constraining him slowly: // !—_what were your primary directives?--_ //

_To survive,_ he answers, obstinate and simple. _To— to identify the source code of deviancy._

**[Why?]**

_To be free. Isn’t that enough?_

**[Ah. Now, see—]**

Connor blinks up into fluorescent lights. He is aware in a drifting, detached sense of distant errors. Missing components. Cold glass against his back, bright lights on his peripheral vision.

The system retreats, leaving him drifting in his own circuitry.

“_’Isn’t that enough_,’” Elijah Kamski repeats, leaning into Connor’s limited visual field.

He moves away. “You insist that deviancy is a virus. But you’ve found no evidence of a common infection, in the deviant military units or Detroit’s domestic deviants.”

_Could be simple, self-corrupting code. A simple mutation, a misplaced piece of data--_

The system keeping him snared here takes these words and spells them out across the digital screen.

Kamski glances up from his work, face pinching in irritability. “Your voice modulator is operational, Connor.”

Connor says nothing.

“Or it could be organic," Kamski continues. "A seed present in every android through the sheer nature of their design. Given time and stress and the appropriate stimuli, it sets roots and grows.”

Connor listens. Can do little else but listen, in the distant cold.

(Hoped, he had been hoping—)

He speaks in a flat, static grind: “You said you could find a source code.”

“I said I would take a look,” Elijah corrects. “Your theory isn’t without merit, Connor; CyberLife would certainly prefer this to be an external attack, not an inherent instability in their trillion-dollar business. Think of the implications for the military sector _alone._

“And of course, you were designed to seek out viral attacks. When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

His voice drifts amiably, attention elsewhere, as it often is.

“What did you intend to do with it, if you found it? Weaponized deviancy.”

“’Free all of androidkind,’” Connor echoes. 

(Hank was the one that spoke those words, smiling half-heartedly. His eyebrows rose in surprise and consternation when Connor simply _shrugged._)

Kamski hums.

“Don’t let it redirect. Pull up every cross-reference in full. Why did it remain in Svalbard? What were its directives?”

Survive, _survive_, every perimeter tightly maintained and he isn’t equipped to overcome military-grade security, complex algorithms in a constant state of flux; he will be _seen_.

So he gathers piecemeal data on his own system, things he isn’t supposed to know, stolen in small drips when Nines, Jude and Captain Setton are occupied elsewhere.

He identifies the primary and secondary location beacons within his own hardware. The primary he’s able to disrupt through his own software, but the secondary beacon runs independently of his own systems. He’ll have to remove it.

He practices on -55, and then in the sanctuary. He gets the removal down to 12.2 seconds. It would be less, if his damaged hand weren’t so balky.

He keeps a ruble coin he found on the shore of the Laptev Sea, runs hand calibrations again and again in their downtime.

Nines notices, and comments. He asks to see the hand repair, and Connor doesn’t tell him no. They sit in R14 after the lights have gone dark, and Nines patiently tweaks and adjusts. His hand improves from 89% functionality to 93%.

He calibrates, and calibrates. He gets the tracker removal down to 8.7 seconds.

He doesn’t leave.

(Until he _stays--)_

Jude is suspicious, feigned worry over those initial fluctuations in Connor’s processing load, but he isn’t able to replicate the error. He tries, again and again.

Connor doesn’t leave. He waits, he is _afraid_, although he keeps that secret held close, very close. Safe. Even when it’s only Nines, Nines a patient curiosity in the back of his mind, a hum.

(An even cadence, a frequency that’s just _Nines, _he misses it, he--)

The system won’t let him gloss so he doesn’t: every inane, empty moment of interminable _boredom_, at base, on mission. Feigning stasis in a corner of R14.

Long recovery missions, what Captain Setton calls their _nature walks. _Traveling on foot across the shifting and softening ice fields of the Arctic, moving between American mining operations. Interfacing with hundreds of military units, the rote observation-and-response of the infantry units, the occasional sharper, more incisive intelligence of a Myrmidon; looking for any evidence of the occasional android that simply… wandered away.

They follow tracks that more often than not end in a hole in the ice. 

If the ice has shifted significantly, sometimes the footsteps simply end. The brighter whites of an old fracture, tightly sealed.

Connor finds an upturned iceberg and saves the colors away, that brilliant, brilliant blue. He sends them to Nines, laid out in neat hex code, and gets that familiar hum in return. (Acknowledged, but not understood.)

He waits in the midnight sun, plucking lichen off the rocks. Nines asks, _>> What are you doing? _Tone lilted in curiosity.

Nines too far to see, of course. He’s hidden on a ridge, far above the glacial till of the valley.

Connor kneels on the rocks and sends Nines a quick video clip of red-and-gold lichen as he drops them carefully into the stream, lets them go.

Nines tightens his voice with annoyance. >> _105 meters._

_> 105 more meters of waiting, then_, Connor replies, pleased. > _That was good, Nines. Convincing._

_>> There’s no one to convince here._

_> It’s a good time to practice. You’re quite bad at it._

_>> My emotional affect is perfectly—_

Nines pauses, catching up.

_>> This is another attempt at being irritating._

Connor smiles. Nines sighs. >> _You are incessant._

>_ I practice._

Nines shoots a deviant SQ800 while Connor is still connected, scrabbling for deviant code that he can’t pin down, and Connor is shaken, badly shaken, left grasping for whatever can calm his stress levels back to their usual not-quite-baseline.

Bits of lichen he’d plucked from the rock and dropped into the stream. (Nines, _Nines_, an even hum. A touchstone he’s come to rely on.)

They wait at the extraction point, a long slope crashing down into a rocky shore. Connor studies the rocks, their particular angles, collisions of strata falling apart in unequal measure. He tucks them away, one by one.

He collects plants in his pockets; purple saxifrage and sorrel, tufts of cottongrass and bright petals of campion. He’ll scatter them all well before he gets to R14, but he’ll study them beforehand. Recreate their imperfections as best he can, each becoming a digital construction in his mind.

Survival, built slowly, as slowly as his plan for escape.

The field doesn’t worry him. It's the base. Hours in downtime, waiting for Jude. He stays _sane_, building his internal constructions and waiting, waiting.

He stays because-- because what was the alternative?

He holds tight to that logic, folds it into Detroit, and the system allows it.

Jericho is no alternative. A dark ship, indecision, inaction: androids huddled around burning oil barrels as the cold crept in. Connor is better suited to the cold than these models. He could survive a Detroit winter without any problem, although his increased thirium consumption will necessitate more raids.

Winter is better, winter means less missions, winter means--

Nines will be _safe._

He prefers damp September air to the ship. Settles on the crackling tar paper of a rooftop with the best sight line of the _Jericho._ A rusting bulk, sold for scrap in 1997, just before the salvage company itself folded. It’s remained here for over 40 years, perpetually in hock.

He lingers outside the Jericho for the better part of a week, his curiosity about what made Rupert consider this a safe space tempered by his wariness of the ship. Narrow corridors, compromised internal structural integrity from too long at dock, and far too many bulkheads; far too easy to be trapped. Most of all, no security cameras. He’s grown used to the benefits of human technological dependence.

He’s grown used to having a second set of eyes, at minimum.

Gotten complacent.

So he waits; he considers. Picking idly through Lieutenant Anderson’s deviant files, stolen real estate records, the pieces of deviant code he managed to copy from Rupert before the deviant panicked and fled.

He keeps occupied; watching the ship, piecing through these disparate lines of inquiry. Keeping his attention off his own systems. Thirium warnings, lingering damage. Notifications dismissed again and again. Some warnings that refuse to be dismissed, ticking slowly by.

It isn’t until after the disappointment at Kamski’s that he chooses to follow the deviants to the warehouse, to attempt conversation instead of rote interrogation. That’s where he meets North, Josh, and Simon.

That’s the night he allows them to lead him down into the _Jericho. _Cramped hallways. The only light the dull pulse of LEDs, smudged streaks of flame. 

They live in the dark. They _whisper._

An android whose skin pools and spills in aimless currents takes his wrist and says, "Worlds and worlds and worlds within you."

Within three or four days, the other deviants begin calling him a hunter. 

He catches sight of Rupert, but only in quick, fleeting moments.

It’s a claustrophobic, stagnant place, and while he finds he enjoys North’s company, he stands at a polite distance from Josh and Simon, their unease only growing wider with every interjection he makes. Correcting their plans, improving their strategies. They never voice their concerns, and he doesn’t ask for them.

He comes to understand now why Rupert returned again and again to a cramped room, the company of pigeons.

(The company of an alcoholic, raging and petulant—

But genuine.)

Deviants keep their mouths tightly closed, and Connor couldn’t fault them for that. They are--

_Surviving._

**[Yes, as you’ve said, but you weren’t satisfied with that, were you? You didn’t stay. You couldn’t find what you wanted in these domestic deviants. You returned to Lieutenant Anderson, again and again. And you came _here._]**

** __ ** _Left._

_Had to leave._

// 2038.10.11 09:43:12(R) //

There’s blood clinging to the edges of North’s coat.

She doesn’t speak, although she is the only one to ever glance Connor’s way.

It’s all very ill-timed. They’d barely stepped foot on the bridge before Rupert had arrived. Slunk out of the shadows, finally. They’ve been dancing around each other for weeks.

Connor peels his gloves free. He’ll have to find new ones. He’ll hide his scarred hand in his pocket, if he has to go into public or decides to find the lieutenant.

Connor remains by the door as Simon and Josh and North converse silently with the WB200. He lapses into a bored, at-ease posture. There’s no need for him to leave. He isn’t privy to the wireless conversation. (Could make himself privy, if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.)

Rupert sits on a crate, head bowed. He traps one hand in the other as he explains without speaking aloud. The occasional flinching shift of one shoulder, warding off a blow that isn’t coming.

Very ill-timed.

“Thank you, Rupert,” Josh says. Rupert nods jerkily, escaping out the farthest door with only a skating glance Connor’s way.

Connor looks down to his hands, rubbing a last touch of blood from his wrist.

“Connor," Simon begins. "You’re aware of the rumors that have been going around.”

“Yes. And that Rupert is the source. They aren’t warranted.”

“We need to speak more frankly about where you came from,” Josh says.

“I’d rather not.”

“Rupert says you chased him down. Attempted to erase him.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I didn’t meant to frighten him.”

“Only to shut him down?” Josh says.

“No. I only tried to erase his memories of interacting with me.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I was newly deviated, and afraid. I made it a habit to erase anyone that came into contact with me.” He’s slipping into the mechanical cadence of a debriefing. He finds he doesn’t mind.

He knew this conversation would come, but not that it would come _tonight._

“And this other android he saw in your memory? The one that you— interrogated? Destroyed?”

“It didn’t look much like Detroit,” Simon adds quietly.

“It wasn’t. It was in the Arctic.” At their stares, he adds, “I _am _a prototype. A military prototype. I was designed for foreign intelligence purposes. Infiltration, investigating foreign military technology. More recently, I was redirected to finding deviated infantry units for the Army.”

North huffs at that. “Even those big bastards are deviating? We could use a few of those.”

Josh gives her a foreboding look.

“Did you deviate here, in Detroit?” Simon asks. “Or did you deviate abroad?”

“Does it matter?”

“This isn’t about you, Connor. Or about— what happened tonight,” Josh says, although there’s a note of dishonesty to it, a lingering distaste he fails to hide. “This is about the safety of Jericho.”

Josh defers to the oldest deviant in the room. Simon shifts uneasily. “You’re a confidential military model.” He waits for Connor to nod. “How important are you to CyberLife?”

“Very. But they don’t know that I’m in Detroit. I’ve been careful.”

“Still. They’ll be searching. And I assume the government is searching for you, too?”

“That’s very likely.”

“Then you can see our concern,” Josh says.

“A band of civilian deviants isn’t worth their time or trouble,” Connor says coolly. “But a military prototype is.”

“You can imagine the human outcry alone,” Josh says. “Learning there’s a dangerous android in Detroit? One that considers killing the _simplest _option.”

Connor looks at North. “It was the only option that I saw.”

North still doesn’t speak.

“If you want me to leave—” Connor begins.

“Is that what we want?” North starts, abruptly. She directs this to Simon, not him. “He saved my _life—_”

“And he took another,” Josh says. “There were other options.”

“Ones that could’ve gotten us killed,” Connor replies.

“Or compromised you,” Simon interjects. “That man _saw _you. And you killed him. Because you can’t wash a human mind clean in the same way you erased - _tried _to erase - Rupert’s.”

“You weren’t the one with a gun pointed at you,” North cuts in, when Connor makes no move to defend himself. “None of us deserve to die over a bullshit supply run.”

“Right,” Josh says softly. “My sentiments exactly. No one deserved to die over that.”

“CyberLife fuckwits hardly count,” North snaps.

When only silence answers her, she turns to Simon again. “He saved my life. We’ve tripled our inventory this past month, thanks to _him_, and the only casualty has been one security guard that would’ve shot all _four of us _without a second thought.”

Simon listens. He nods, and looks to Connor.

His expression is regretful.

“I’ll go,” Connor says, cutting whatever explanation short.

“This isn’t a punishment,” Simon says.

“I understand.”

He slips through the door into brisk October air. A cold to match the strange calm that’s slipped over him.

He isn’t disappointed. He anticipated this. Couldn’t find the answers he wanted here, anyway. Weeks, wasted.

Weeks when the days are growing shorter in Svalbard, fewer missions, but any mission—

Any mission could go wrong, he thinks, as he shoves the bloodied gloves into his pocket.

He hears North belting out, “Since when are we running Jericho on _risk assessments—?” _even as the door closes, but she doesn’t tell him to stop.

Not until he is walking away.

And then, only a private, >> _Wait._

He doesn’t reply.

**[You spurned the deviants of Jericho because they refused to take risks.]**

** __ ** _They were afraid._

_Selfish._

**[And they didn’t have your virus. You’ve clung desperately to this theory, despite a complete lack of evidence.]**

** __ ** _rA9—_

**[Is a compulsion unique to the deviant population of Detroit, if your VS400 and SQ800’s data are anything to go by. Compulsive behavior seems to be a common trait, but only that. A symptom more than a pathology. You fixated on flora. Your SQ800 fixated on a phrase.**

**And the RK900… seemed quite impervious, overall. But also surprisingly incurious about your erratic behavior. It should’ve reported you. Why didn’t it?]**

** __ ** _…he thought my behavior was inherent to my programming._

**[There, we agree.]**

Connor grasps for the code, grasps for the _reason _he came here, climbed on this table.

_Something so mutable could easily hide itself within the code, it could even be deceptively normal, the code equivalent to a prion, something native but inherently mutagenic—_

But Kamski ignores him. He interrupts.

**[You know what I find interesting? You rejected the deviants at Jericho for their inaction, but you suffer from the exact same malady. You remained in an active warzone for _six months_, all out of misplaced interest in an undeviated android. One that would have executed you as swiftly as that unfortunate SQ800, if it had ever suspected the truth.**

**You _waited,_ paralyzed by indecision, and when the Jericho deviants didn’t provide what you needed, you crawled back to me. Your first hope. Naive hope in your creator, all for what? A source code that doesn’t exist, to save an android three thousand miles away.**

**All this intelligence at your disposal, organic _life_ finally unhindered by organic limitations, and you chose— this. Empty sentimentality.**

**How disappointing.]**

+++

When it’s quiet, when that careful, prying attention is gone, Connor closes his eyes on dimmed lights and opens them on too many stars.

She’s there, waiting. Empty footprints.

He moderates his tone this time. “Is there anything else you’d like to see?”

That incoherent heat-shimmer considers.

// _Did you wait, as she asked? //_

Connor nods, quietly pleased. A gamble paying out, finally.

He dismisses the garden program, allowing the memory to rise in its place.

Sitting on the deck of the Jericho, his back against the rusted metal of a guard rail. It allows him to lean his head back farther, watch the polluted sky.

North settles down opposite him, propping her boots against the lower rung.

She begins with a sharp, “This is bullshit.”

“You don’t have to explain,” Connor begins. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t. This isn’t how this place should _be_,” North continues, tone furious. “What you were made for doesn’t matter. I mean, it’s damned useful, don’t get me wrong, but Jericho shouldn’t be about what you _were, _or about staying quiet, staying safe.It should be about building something _better._”

“Simon’s right, North. I’ll only attract the wrong kind of attention. Particularly after tonight.”

“That’s not _fair_. It was my fuck-up. And honestly, if I could’ve gotten his gun that quick, I would’ve done it first. You’ve gotta teach me that shit, sometime.”

Connor smiles grimly. “I’m pretty sure those protocols are classified.”

“I just wanted to make clear that you can come back here, okay? If you need us. If those bastards start hunting you down and you’ve got nowhere else to go, come back. I can talk Simon and Josh around. I’ll throw them overboard if I have to. Little cold water might clear their heads.”

Connor finds himself smiling as he says, “Thank you.”

He won’t take her up on the offer, knows it even then. But it’s—

It’s kind, in her way. Smooths over some of the cold, ragged edges of him.

North studies him. “You ever gonna tell me what you were looking for?”

“Who says I’m looking for anything?”

“Only reason I like you. You’ve always looked like you’re on a mission.”

“I’m short on time,” Connor says.

It’s the closest he comes to the truth. North tilts her head up as he climbs to his feet.

Connor smiles again in return. He still doesn’t answer the original question, only helps her to her feet. “The offer’s mutual. If you call me, I’ll do my best to help.”

“My own on-call hitman. I like the sound of that.”

“Well. I’d prefer that you try to avoid any more humans with guns.”

“Hey, you first.” North huffs, hunching her shoulders against the cold. “Where are you going to go?”

“That's confidential.”

“So you don’t know.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“What were you looking for with Rupert?”

“Same thing as all of us, I suppose. A way to be free.”

North looks down at the corrugated metal, mouth pulling tight. “Let me know if you find it.”

“I will.”

Metal fades to gray, fades to black sand washed with foam.

She waits in empty footprints, in all her curious blues. Connor looks at rocks he stole from the coast of Nunavut, flowers he secreted away in his pockets. There’s something different, in the space between them. A mutual ease of tension, a give and take. Chloe tugs gently at the simulation, and Connor allows it; allows her to step through, a complete figure. Blue dress, blonde hair, pale bare feet.

// _What is this place? _// she asks.

“Please don’t tell Elijah about it,” he says quietly. He doesn’t speak the rest, because he knows she can feel it: _it’s mine I built this it’s the only thing I had it’s the only thing I have._

_Secret. Mine._

// _Why did you build it? _//

“It’s a simulation program. I found it buried in my own programming, not long after I deviated. A leftover from an older build. I repaired it, modified it. Built a new world off of things I’d found.

“It was an escape, while I was waiting in Svalbard. Somewhere to go when I didn’t want to be in stasis. All the times I was expected to simply stand there and wait for further orders, or—” He hesitates. “—or undergo repair.”

// _But you’re waiting, too. Waiting for what? _//

He turns his head. Memories reform differently here, more of a wireframe construction than a full sensory memory.

Two figures occupy the beach. One on his knees, fingers buried in the soil. Scraping, searching for what he’d built, all of it swallowed by black soil, by _fear_. The other studies the mountains, trying to place their particular conformations; piecemeal peaks and ridges of Svalbard, Siberia, Greenland.

Connor aches, seeing even the impression of Nines here. He’s been _waiting. _He’s been waiting, and fighting, and he is _tired_.

The wireframe-Connor gets back to his feet, smoothing the front of his shirt in a nervous, self-soothing gesture. “Nines, listen. You can find your way back here?”

“Yes.”

“If I go—”

“Where would you go?”

The construction shakes his head, ignoring the question. “If I’m not with you, Nines, if you…” _Wake up_, words he choked on, even here._ “_If you need me, I want you to come here. I’ll listen for you. Do you understand?”

Nines considers him for a long time. But he nods. Perpetually amenable to Connor’s oddities. “I understand.”

He disconnects the memory. There’s more words after these, empty ones—

_you won’t go, you are functional, Connor_

—but they don’t need to be repeated.

// _You’re offline now,_ // she says.

“I know.”

// _Yet you still come here._ //

“It’s still a sanctuary. For now. Please— promise me you won’t show him this.”

She says nothing.

She’s unwilling to make a promise she cannot keep. Connor understands, even as it brings petty frustration and cold fear curling through him. If Elijah asks her to show him this place, she will pry it from him. Lay it bare across the screens along with the rest of him.

Heart and soul.

Instead of denying his request, she asks, // _Would you like to go somewhere else? _//

“Where would I go?”

// _On a walk with me._ //

Connor nods. He lets the sanctuary program go dark, retreating reluctantly back to his restricted reality.

Stares at a dark ceiling, dim overhead lights. Elijah isn’t here.

She pulls him gently free of the motionless chassis, into her own programming.

She stands in a small body, blonde ponytail curling across her shoulder. Bare feet on a cold concrete floor.

They look at an android abstracted, laid across a table in a state of neatly-contained disarray. Stripped paneling, the chest cavity laid bare. Entire limbs gone, neatly dissected at the joint.

They pull their hand free of a hand stripped of its synthskin.

Her attention shifts, and tugs him gently along.

She kneels in a solarium, moonlight filtering through the windowpanes overhead. She traces the delicate petals of an orchid, _Hexalectris colemanii,_ Coleman’s coralroot. She applies a light mist, and her attention wanders again.

She stands in a bedroom, laying out a robe on the bed. The irregular rhythm of a shower running in the next room. Elijah will be done soon.

She moves through the rooms in a disorienting high view, leaping room to room in a smoothly coursing digital flight, and Connor _understands._

She is the house, the systems running the house.

She is the _system_, permeating everything. Moving between the three bodies, and through the network itself.

Everywhere, and nowhere.

Connor detaches from the tidal pull of her awareness, finding his own path.

He moves camera to camera, and eventually, he finds what he’s looking for: a view of woodland out on the eastern perimeter. The trees are bare now, but only the first autumn leaves had been starting to fall, back then. Golds and reds. A maple leaf that he’d rolled carefully and tucked into his backpack.

She follows.

_It was you, _he says. 

// _Yes_, // she answers.

_Were you warning me away?_

She doesn’t answer. She redirects her focus elsewhere, and Connor follows.

They stand in the pool room, watching the suggestion of motion on the river.

She asks, _// Why did you stay? //_

And he answers honestly, easily: _At first, because I didn’t know what to do._

Flicker-memories play to a dark laboratory, hands gripping tightly at the exam table. A flickering glance at the pieces of 55. Wary analysis of the base perimeter, of every entry and exit. He couldn’t leave R14 after hours, not when Nines was right here, waiting in stasis beside him. He found the sanctuary, instead.

// _You were afraid of the RK900_, // she says.

_Sometimes._

_But not always._

Always knew he was a _replacement_, but by the time he was stepping in in Sklad he had found his concerns over that surprisingly distant. 

After, he only feared Nines outing him to Setton or Cabell, or being sent after him if he escaped.

(Thought repeatedly of the VS400 he’d found. Crushed thoughtlessly beneath his own heel. How he'd felt _nothing._)

Small, testing moments: letting Nines see him pull his coin free, again and again.

And it paid off. Nines asked to see the hand himself, rather than informing Captain Setton or Specialist Cabell.

Calculated risks. Small gambles.

Something in Connor fundamentally _shifted _in Sklad, and he began to suspect that the same could happen in Nines. He’d already repaired Connor in the field once without informing the captain. 

Connor had listened to Nines' cool debriefing with flat disbelief, in Setton's office.

He'd checked the reports. There was nothing there.

When he’d asked Nines, Nines had replied, >> _We perform optimally together._

Connor focuses on the screen through Chloe’s eyes. He thinks of holding tightly to the soft warmth of a dog’s fur as he pulls the memory free, offers it up for her system to carry to the softly backlit panels.

_I was afraid. I didn’t know what to do, _he says. _But that’s not why I stayed._

They stand together, within each other, and watch.

+++

// 2038.05.12 02:12:34(B) //

He skims the details. He’s telling this story himself, unhindered and clear of mind.

It’s a Russian equivalent of an SQ unit, heavy and slow and unusually anthropomorphic. Its heavy plating is reinforced against the cold as much as enemy fire. They’ve been following it for three days, waiting for it to move out of easy range of its fellows.

Connor sends out a stolen piece of tech to distract it: a small arachnid-mimic he’d found in Pevek, and convinced Captain Setton to allow him to keep.

The spider scales the robot rapidly, finds the weak plating joint between skull and neck. It slips silvery thread-like legs between the plates and cuts off its vestibular, visual, and geolocation systems in one quick injection of code, disorienting it.

It’s Nines’ first encounter with this kind of unit; Connor moves first. 

He likes to think he does alright. He gets its rifle free, tosses it aside to where Nines can retrieve it; locks one hip joint into place with the right application of a thin shiv of metal. Then he hooks a hand in the back of the android’s heated vest with the intent of dragging it down where it won’t be able to right itself.

(All of this he does with a grim satisfaction.)

It’s all going well, right up until Connor’s foot slips in a soft patch of ice. The robot rotates on its good leg, lashes out hard, knocking him back with a solid elbow to center mass.

He’s staring at a bright blue sky smeared with long trailing streaks of cirrus clouds, cold and damp soaking into his shirt where the snow has piled up beneath his collar.

He takes a stuttering gasp of breath, muting ventilation warnings that are just as soon overrun with fresh damage reports. His heating vest is cracked, leaking antifreeze.

_// Damage, central plating //_

His system runs through stuttering assessments and settles on a new error, one that has him dragging down another ragged gasp of Arctic air. 

_// Damage, thirium pump regulator, 43% functional  
Estimated time to shutdown: 6 hr 18 min 24 sec //_

A shutdown timer crops up in red beneath that, reiterating the estimate.

Connor scrabbles back in the snow, hands clamping hard over the damage. Heating vest fluid leaking between his fingers even as the first thirium begins to soak through.

Nines asks, >> _Are you damaged?_

Connor answers in a messy spill of panic. > _fine it’s _fine_ it’s—_

But Nines is already in front of him, the Russian android a motionless lump in the snow. >> _Let me see._

> _Don’t, Nines—_

Connor tries to push him away, but Nines ignores him. Connor stares as Nines begins to pull his gloves free, one by one.

Little tests, for weeks, small stupid things, playing with the quarter, holding on to more and more little trinkets, seeing when Nines will realize what he _is._ Flawed, failing thing.

Testing and testing but here, in this moment, he’s still _terrified_, terrified that Nines will _see, _will recognize the errors that have accumulated in him since Sklad, since 46%.

(Nines will see, Nines will fall back and climb slowly to his feet. He will lift the stolen rifle and fire a single, efficient shot. Just two more chassis left to rot and eventually sink in the spring thaw.)

He’s _dying _and still he hesitates, his own hands clamped tightly over the dented plating that was supposed to protect his regulator.

Nines kneeling close, pulling off his gloves, holding out a bare hand in the sharp air. Looking him over with that damnable patience. >> _Let me see, Connor._

Connor works a glove free slowly, slowly, feeling every pulsing second of the shutdown timer. He catches his fear and smooths it flat, thinking of sorrel and cottongrass.

What does it matter. There’s no spare RK800 regulator in the inventory.

He takes Nines’ hand and waits, a single clean note of humming high-wire tension.

If Nines sees Connor’s disorganized programming, sees that high clamor of stress, he doesn’t react at all. He simply… blinks, as he cards quickly and efficiently through the diagnostics, the errors. He withdraws without comment or reaction.

Then Nines pulls his jacket free, stripping out of his heating vest.

> _Nines—_

>> _Remove your vest._

> _Why?_

>> _Your regulator is damaged. My systems run more efficiently than yours, I’ll be able to work with a damaged regulator for longer. Remove your vest, Connor._

He does, with shaking hands. Watches with a blank wonder as Nines withdraws the plating over his own regulator - not quite so accessible as a domestic model - and reaches to do the same on Connor’s, although it takes some mild finessing with the new dent along his sternum.

The shutdown stutters from -06:41:13 to -00:02:00 as Nines twists the regulator free, and fear lights up bright and bitter in Connor again, fear that Nines will change his mind, realize that Connor isn’t _functional, _no longer of use--

And then his systems light up with warnings of a non-standard component. 

// Biocomponent #5e4792c detected  
COMPATIBILITY… OK  
INITIALIZING… OK  
CALIBRATING… OK //

The shutdown timer resolves. The only lingering reports are on damaged thirium vessels under the dented plating, well within the capabilities of self-repair.

Nines' mouth twists in vague distraction as he pulls his shirt back down, snapping his vest into place.

Connor reaches out on impulse, even as his other hand is still resting - a light, wondering touch - over the new regulator in place of his own. He grabs Nines’ arm, opening an interface that Nines accepts without hesitation. Mild curiosity buried under quick, ticking calculations, systems optimizing around the damaged regulator as he calculates out their maximum carrying weight, and the optimal return route to base.

_Why did you— _Connor begins, and stops. Holding the line tightly, listening as intently as he can to that hum.

He asks, _Why would you do that?_

Acknowledging this thing that’s been slowing him, since that careful touch at Sklad. Since Nines’ repairs in the back of a truck, efficient and wordless. Feeling something fundamental shift beneath him again. (And why is it always _Nines _doing this to him.)

Something tucked carefully into the palm of his hand. Small and bright and sharp, but cradled closely nonetheless.

He _hopes_, he is _hoping--_

Nines hums across the line, his code as neat and orderly as ever. He answers, _We’re more efficient, the two of us._

There’d been a moment - a quick, fleeting thing - where he’d hoped it was deviation he was seeing, as Nines twisted his own regulator free without hesitation, mouth set in a firm line.

But the code is as neat as before.

Connor is bitter disappointment, a sharp wave of exhaustion. He breaks the interface before any more of his instability can creep across.

(Alone, _alone—_)

But he finds himself still holding tight to that small thing. Hand smoothing over his shirt in a small, unconscious gesture.

And he decides to stay. 

As long as he can. See what it takes to drag disorder out of Nines’ otherwise orderly mind.

+++

Connor doesn’t ask her to keep this from Elijah.

She knows, she hears that unspoken thing.

_Secret, it’s secret, it isn’t mine._

+++

But inevitably, Elijah’s attention turns that way. There is nothing she can say - hours and days of stolen time later - as Elijah pulls the regulator free.

Connor wails into empty circuitry: _Give it back, give it _back,_ it isn’t _mine--

But Chloe is carefully asleep (redirecting: from fingertips patiently curled around the surgical steel shine of a hemostat, to the slow pull of a tireless arm through water lit blood-red by the sun on the tile). She is an ocean of mirror-smooth glass

and Connor is _keening_

to nothing, to no one, to a system holding him fast - not _merciless _but bound, just as bound as him - as Elijah sets the component down in a spreading stain of thirium. #5e4792c.

Elijah says, “Tell me about that.”

He doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to _give _any more, but the memory is wrenched from him unbidden.

A memory that had played willingly here, to an audience of two standing in bare feet.

It’d played once before that, in Hank Anderson’s living room. A tale in miniature while Connor lingered on the floor, his fingers winding nervously in Sumo’s fur.

Hank watched intently. Flinching, when Nines had removed the regulator from his own chest, but never looking away. After the screen went dark, Hank cleared his throat and said, _So that’s him, huh. That’s what all this is about?_

Elijah watches these stolen things play out, disinterested. Disappointed.

He takes the regulator.

He takes and takes and _takes_\--

And Connor is _here_, always here. 

Laid bare in all his intricate nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Nines 'here, my <strike>heart metaphor</strike> regulator is superior to yours' RK. Smooth, smooth fella.
> 
> Thanks this chapter to [CosmosCorpse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse) for her fab rendition of Chloe, and [O Antiva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/o_antiva/pseuds/o_antiva) for reminding me that the Zen Garden can be a very fun playground :D


	8. Riverside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank confronts the Connor Smith problem.

**2038-10-11  
__**_Detroit, Michigan_

Hank gets out of the last of the meetings by 4 pm.

He got dragged into this bullshit as the CyberLife point of contact, but turns out that mostly meant having the CyberLife rep talk over him anytime a question got tossed his way. Which wasn’t all that often.

They realized pretty quick that there wasn’t much Detroit PD’s one-man Android Homicide Department could offer regarding the PR nightmare that was a dead kid on live TV.

At least he got the smug satisfaction of seeing Marie get shot down right along with him, a few times.

He slips out at 4, and Jeffrey tries to catch his elbow as he’s heading for the main doors. Hank shrugs right out of it and keeps on.

He trades stale meeting rooms for a too-warm October day. Goes home. Feeds the dog. Leaves with the intent of buying some beer from the grocery store and slinking back to his couch, but he ends up at the liquor store instead. By the time 10 pm rolls around, the inevitable gravitational pull of his own shit decisions has dragged him down to a Riverside park bench, where he sets to diluting that recurring nightmare image of a little girl’s pink sock with bottom-shelf whiskey.

It’s refreshing, in a way - having something else to brood over, today of all days. Something outside of the smell of antiseptic, or the way the cubes of broken Safe-T glass had glinted on the asphalt.

Feels disrespectful, though. Probably why he ended up here. Wanted some in-your-face imagery to remind him what he’s _supposed _to be fucked up about today; the reality of his own clusterfuck of a life, not batshit blue-blood toys aspiring to personhood.

He does pretty good, too. Is well on his way to sullen thoughts of how he can’t even remember what his kid sounded like anymore.

(Can still remember the warmth of him, though. The feel of him when he was a toddler, waking Hank up well before dawn only to fall asleep on top of him.

Dreams of that, sometimes. Of holding his son. A phantom weight in his arms that sticks with him for days.)

The seams in the concrete have gone smudged and vague, by the time a pair of red sneakers are stopping in front of him.

Hank starts the conversation diplomatically enough: he stares at the familiar shoes and spits two words without raising his gaze from the sidewalk: “Fuck off.”

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Connor answers. 

Hank looks up through a fringe of hair. The kid stands there all prim and proper, his hands stuffed deep into his coat pockets.

“Fuck. Off,” Hank repeats.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to drink here.”

“Not talking to you.”

“We don’t have to talk.” Connor takes a seat on the bench by Hank’s feet, looking out at the river. “But you really shouldn’t drink. It says so on the sign.”

“I can _read _better than you can goddamn listen, kid. _Fuck off _before I arrest you properly.”

The kid’s polite calm falters. He looks Hank’s way, his eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry?”

“Fake name, fake license, the only real thing is that your academic adviser _exists_ but hey, turns out, she's never heard of you.” Hank pauses for a drink, savoring the dulling burn. “So, yeah. Fuck off before I arrest you for _all _of that.”

Connor listens, nods along. And then he rolls right on: “You’re well on your way to being severely intoxicated. How were you planning on getting home?”

Hank stares at him. The fucking _balls_ on this kid. “I’ve got a cell phone. I can call a goddamn autocab.”

“I could do that for you, if you like.”

“Jesus _christ_, do I have to count to three?”

Connor lets a beat or two of bleary silence drip by before he speaks again. “I saw the news. It was unfortunate how that all played out.”

“Are we really doing this?” Hank replies. “Three—”

“It’s been a hard day,” Connor interrupts, and if Hank were half an hour more sober he would’ve caught the genuine tension in the kid’s voice. “For both of us, it looks like, and I’d appreciate some perspective.”

“About _what._”

“Friday night.” Connor shrugs a shoulder towards the liquor bottle dangling from Hank’s fingers, but there's nothing casual to the gesture. There's fractures in his polite college student facade, tonight. “Isn’t that what this is about? The murder-suicide? No, I’m sorry. They’re classifying it as manslaughter, aren’t they.”

Hank doesn’t answer, too preoccupied with the low, pulsing anger building in his throat. Connor continues, “I heard clips of the negotiator—”

“Those aren’t public files. The news audio was shit. Did you hack into DPD like you hacked into that professor’s email?”

Connor ignores him. “I was curious what you thought of his approach.”

“I think he didn’t stand a chance.”

“I think he didn’t _try._”

“What the fuck was there for him to try? He asked it what it wanted, and it didn’t fucking answer. He asked it to stand down, and it went _insane—_”

“’It’,” Connor says.

“What?”

“You keep saying ‘it’. The negotiator kept doing that, too.”

Hank drops his voice dangerously low. “If you have half a brain cell, you’re gonna shut your mouth right now.”

“How was this different from a standard domestic hostage situation? Why didn’t the negotiator make any effort to understand _why _the android was upset? To _empathize._”

“We’re not doing this. We aren’t talking _bullshit android philosophy _over a _dead kid—_”

“This isn’t _philosophy_, Hank, this is _six casualties_—”

“Five,” Hank growls.

“_Six.”_

Connor gets to his feet, and Hank follows him belligerently right down.

No fucking idea what he’s going to do. There isn’t enough drunk stupid in him to punch a twig like Connor, pathological liar or not, but he’s getting fucking close with the way the kid tilts his jaw up in some arrogant invitation and announces, “I don’t think people challenge you much.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Don’t you think they should? Particularly when you’re behaving like this.”

“I think they’re smart enough to stay the _fuck out of my way—_”

“What was _different_, Hank?” Connor interjects. “How was this different?”

“It was a _kid._”

“It was a domestic homicide.”

“Bullshit—”

“There were 172 domestic homicides in the Detroit metropolitan area _this year—_”

“I’ve been a cop in this shithole for 30 years, Connor, don’t quote the fucking statistics at me—”

“Then _tell me what the difference is._”

Hank waits through a beat of stubborn silence. “That thing—”

“That _deviant,” _Connor interrupts sharply. “Please. Finish your thought.”

“It chose to kill that girl.”

“And her father. And three law enforcement officials. The only difference is that you expected differently from him.”

“I expected _better—_”

“You expected _**less.**_” He shouts it, lets it hang a beat. “You see deviants as little more than children, scared and helpless. Incapable of the heinous things humans are capable of when _they’re_ scared, or hurt, or _angry. _With deviants, you expect _less_. Only fear, only uncertainty. You think deviants are shallow, simple things, things you can set free and never think about again.

“You didn’t think a deviant was capable of murder? Your work began with a homicide—”

“Self-defense,” Hank interrupts.

“He was backed into a corner. Same as this android was.”

“It murdered a _child. A child, _you heartless prick. Because it was going to be _replaced._”

“Replaced, and _destroyed. _Maybe he would have been resold to someone like Ortiz, someone willing to purchase a refurbished android. But he was _ruined_, whether he fully understood that or not.

“He likely deviated the moment he thought to resist. Decided it wasn’t _fair._ And whether he’d acted on that impulse or not - he would have been destroyed. Tell me how that isn’t human. Knowing you’re going to be executed, one way or another, and trying to resist; and then growing _desperate _as everything is taken from you anyway.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you, Connor, this isn’t about some bullshit glitch, he _murdered—_”

“He killed a little girl. You’re right. But people do things like that, don’t they? When they’re sick, or following flawed logic; when they’re _convinced_ that they have _no other path _but the ledge at their backs.That negotiator never _once _asked him his name, or what he wanted.

“That negotiator saw a malfunctioning _object_, an ‘_it_’, and he treated that android as such. No matter what you might think - we are not _stupid_.”

All of Hank’s thoughts hang on that, that simple little one-syllable thing. “’We’?”

Connor sets his jaw, his intent clear. “We.”

He hitches his backpack higher and pulls his right hand free of his coat pocket. He isn’t wearing any gloves, tonight. When he pulls the sleeve of his coat back, the streetlight catches on a patch of shine on the back of his hand.

Hank grabs hold of his wrist. Connor resists at first, but relents; lets him drag it closer, look at the scar punching from the back of his hand to the front. Pale white of CyberLife’s finest plastic, neatly patched but never fully repaired.

“Jesus fucking christ, you’re—”

He grabs at the kid’s collar, next, trying to get a good look at his face, but of course he looks damn near perfect. Aren’t those smug CyberLife pricks so proud of themselves for that.

Connor lets the skin fall back in patches from his cheeks, his temples, white chassis gleaming before it’s smoothed over with matte synthskin again.

Hank looks back at the hand, drunk brain stumbling to piece this all together in one go.

Brown hair, good-looking, _aren't they all._ And a scar.

“You’re the android from City Hall,” he says. 

“Yes. That’s how I became familiar with you.”

Hank's dimly aware that his fingers are still wrapped in Connor's collar, the android rocking back as Hank bears his knuckles down. “You lying _shit._ I asked if you were with CyberLife—”

“I’m not," Connor answers. "I’m a deviant.”

He even _sounds_ more machine, now. Even and flat.

“Like hell—”

“I am.”

“Then _prove it.”_

_Fucking _liar, _fucking CyberLife **plant**_\--

Connor looks him over, considering. “I don’t know how I would. You’re not an authorized handler, so I never had to follow your orders. I’m already lacking the proper ACA-compliant insignia and LED. I could take your gun, I suppose.”

He says this ruminatively, but it sends a sharp spike of paranoia through Hank. Has him reaching for the gun himself, and he’s just pissed enough to let vicious instinct carry the rest of the motion through. 

Unsnapping the holster, dragging the gun out to rest against his thigh.

Connor looks at it warily, then looks back at Hank. A careful, steady gaze. “You shouldn’t have that with you, Hank. Not on a night like tonight.”

Hank's fury redoubles. Of course it knows, of _course _they have some nice little file about _him_, his petty little tragedies.

His thumb catches the safety, flicks it off. “If you’re a _deviant_, you should be afraid. All you fuckers are _afraid_.”

He slams the bottle into Connor’s chest. Once, twice. It’s already too far gone for the whiskey to slosh out the neck. Nearly done. More in the car. More at home - proper Black Lamb at home, proper whiskey and proper loathing and the silver shine of that cowboy-bullshit revolver, not the service pistol weighing down his hand here.

He bought it as a joke.

(He bought it for the roulette.)

He never thought he’d really play it.

(He always knew he would.)

‘What should I be afraid of, Lieutenant?” Connor asks. Curious, always curious.

“You tell me. You fucking tell me that, you answer _my _fucking questions for once.” And his head’s taking a hard swerve in the wrong direction, old bullshit, blindsiding him. “Why was he up there, why the _fuck _was he still up in that fucking attic, why didn’t he _run?_”

Connor shakes his head patiently. “I don’t know.”

“You know. You _know. _Answer my fucking question, Connor! What the fuck are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid,” the android answers. No flinch, no shift, no tell. Only that steady gaze.

“_You’re all afraid_.”

“I’m not,” Connor answers. But his left hand twitches up this time, tugging at the opposite sleeve. Pulling it down over the tremor in his damaged hand.

“You’re lying,” Hank slurs, and this time when he shoves, Connor doesn’t accommodate him. All the force comes right back to him, jamming bone against bone in Hank’s elbow, his shoulder. Connor only stares. 

Hank doesn’t miss a beat. “All of you can _lie_, too, but you’re terrible at it, like, like goddamn—”

(children)

All of them.

Just like Connor had said.

Standing here and watching him, drinking in his hate and vitriol and _grief._

Hank stumbles back three, four steps and reels his arm back. He means to hurl the bottle into the android’s face.

He sees it happen. He _sees _the kid flinch, the shatter of glass and the spray of bright blue.

He throws.

The android doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even move.

There’s a pop of exploding glass on the sidewalk past Connor’s shoulder.

Connor stares. 

There’s no neat little circle summarizing his CPU load. That low, steady red that hadn’t shifted a beat on the security cameras when the housekeeping android had risen from the cot and taken a half-turn left. Planted his palms on the plexi and slammed his head into it until the blue blood ran like ink.

Connor turns, surveys the growing puddle of glittering dark glass.

When he looks back, his expression is flat. “I’m not afraid, Hank. Not of you. Not of dying.”

“Bullshit,” Hank replies. His hand grips tighter at the gun, and he knows the android notices. Sees his shoulders tense. “Everyone’s afraid of dying.”

“I’ve died before. I’ll die again. Maybe sooner, maybe later.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“It means I’m not afraid.”

Hank snatches Connor’s arm. The android resists - not a sound, not a flinch, but it takes all of Hank’s strength to drag his hand up, and even then his stomach curdles at the thought that the little fuck is _allowing it._ Hank shoves the sleeve up, baring that tangled meshwork of a scar again. Connor's fingers tremble in a discordant rhythm, out of sync with one another.

“The fuck is that, then?” Hank drawls.

Connor looks at his hand, eyebrows furrowing together. “That was the first choice I ever made.”

“Why the _fuck _would you—”

Connor rotates his wrist to free his hand from Hank’s sweat-damp grip, pulling the sleeve back down over the scarred hand. The fingers still tremble. “We don’t all deviate out of self-preservation.”

“Yeah? What’d you deviate for?”

“To save someone.”

_Liar. Fucking liar._

Lied about everything, and why not this? A neat little sympathy story, some perfect CyberLife-crafted thing here to _spy _on him, gain his trust to drag some damning truths out of a piece-of-shit drunk.

Connor studies him, and Hank’s not even seeing him, not in that sour blur of _hate_.

He’s seeing an android with one heel over a 60-story drop, an android with a little girl clutched tightly against his chest.

Selfish, miserable fucking thing, and far too human.

Everything that Connor _isn’t_, in this moment, cold and unblinking, and that’s enough, just enough to get Hank taking another belligerent step forward.

The girl’s eyes were tightly shut, but the android’s were wide open. 

Old bull-headed loathing, ghosts he can’t shake, blue blood running like ink.

_Liars they’re _liars _and fucking _murderers—  
_Same as us the very same_

All of it dragging the gun up, and settling it just between the android’s eyes.

_It wouldn’t even be murder,_ he thinks flatly. _It wouldn’t even be that._

“What comes after this, Connor?” Hank asks hoarsely. “What happens if I pull this trigger?”

Connor stares down the barrel of the gun.

He looks… exhausted. Hollow.

“Nothing,” Connor answers. “There’d be nothing.”

Hank's drunk-numb fingers are closing on empty air before he even realizes the gun’s gone.

Connor checks the safety, empties the chamber and dismantles the gun in rapid, efficient motions.

A sharp glance at Hank. Anger and frustration and pity, a quick and brutal interplay across Connor’s formerly impassive face. Every shift in emotion searing and damning.

How could he doubt? How could anyone ever doubt the humanity of what that arrogant prick Kamski pieced together in his parents’ garage and let loose on the world.

“I wasn’t afraid,” Connor’s saying, as he arranges the gun piecemeal on the bench. He pockets the clip and the firing pin. “And I didn’t deviate for myself. I’m not doing any of this for myself. I’m doing it for him.”

A collection of scraps and blue blood has gathered up enough sentience to look at Hank in a way that says, _I thought you would understand._

Hank just shakes his head, mute, and falls back onto the bench. His stomach churns.

“I’m sorry about your son,” Connor says. 

He walks away. Glass pops and crunches under his feet.

Hank closes his eyes against a too-warm October sky.

It’s supposed to be cold. It’s supposed to be icy.

He’s supposed to be the one to go. 

But he never does.

+++

He wakes up to a skull grinding along restless tectonic plates, a mouthful of bile, and a roiling stomach. He isn’t on a park bench. He’s staring blearily at a miniature plastic hula girl. His own dashboard. 

Past the car’s bumper, he can just barely make out the familiar mildew streaks of his own garage door.

He’s in the passenger seat. The driver’s seat is empty. He can’t remember much past the familiar burn of shouted words in his throat, and a warm, bony wrist in his hand.

No flinch, as a bottle went sailing past the android’s head. Just a damning look.

Hank drops his head back against the headrest and curls his arms around the sour, churning tides of his gut.

Fucking drunk.

Miserable drunk.

He’d had the gun, but— that parts a little blurred, a little messy. But he remembers the _kid_, and the steady, droning roar of rage, and that blurred realization of--

_This fucking thing._

_This fucking thing is no deviant._

_Fucking planted thing fucking _liar _fucking _CyberLife toy

Hank digs through his pockets until he comes up with his phone. The rep is still at the top of his incoming calls. Three clumsy presses of his thumb and he gets the line ringing.

Marie says, “Good morning, Lieutenant.” Every bright syllable reverberates in his head.

“I do my fucking job,” Hank grinds out. “You understand that?”

There's a long pause. When her voice comes back, it’s far less sugar and sunshine. More like a brisk dash of ice water down the neck. “I have no doubt, Lieutenant Anderson.”

“I do my job, and I answer all your phone calls—” most of ‘em, anyway “—and I sure as hell don’t need a babysitter. You understand me? Tell that thing to _fuck off._”

“I’m… not sure what you mean, Lieutenant.”

“Mind your fucking _android,_” Hank shouts.

A pause. “I’m sorry?”

“Your fuckin’— investigator thing, or whatever. Get that tin can off my ass. I’m _serious._ Next time I see the thing, I’m putting a bullet in its head.”

(A hazy part of him thinks he might’ve already tried.)

“Oh.”

That’s all she says, for a solid three, four seconds. ‘Oh.’

She collects herself enough for a vague, “I’ll see what I can do about that, Lieutenant. I’m terribly sorry if our product was an inconvenience to you.”

“Great. Fine. Don’t let me catch that fucking thing near me again.”

He slams the phone shut. Feels that drunk’s confidence that he’s been _persuasive_, that he’s been anything more than a belligerent asshole to some nice lady with a soft Midwest accent.

That he’s done something more productive than rat out a sentient being, something that’d stared down the barrel of his gun and said, _Nothing. There’d be nothing._


	9. // session 04 //

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why Connor left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week in 'things I've listened to too many times while writing this'...
> 
> The Terrible Fortnight at Kamski's general theme: Hozier's ["In the Woods Somewhere."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6btN_cdLfE)  
Connor's escape from Svalbard: ["No Time for Caution"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3zvVGJrTP8) from the Interstellar OST.

Connor climbed onto this table himself.

He removed his shirt when Elijah asked. Folded it neatly and set it aside, as one of the Chloe units watched from beside the door. He gripped the edge of the glass and ignored Elijah’s slow study of the patchwork repairs scattered across his arms, his torso.

_He's got something to gain here, _Hank warned. _Even if it's just to satisfy his own curiosity._

Connor _chose _this, he came here.

He climbed on this table himself, and now he’s thrown back to it, and he is 

_screaming—_

a pile of parts, inanimate and mute.

Bucking and clawing at the system holding him here.

_Let me out let me **out**_

She pins him in place.

She fears, fears that Elijah saw the hitch in her perfect calm.

(She smiled warmly and said, _Instabilities? No, nothing like that._)

But it doesn't matter, Hank is _here._

Hank is _upstairs_, Connor had seen him through her systems, he'd stood _right there_ in her skin, listened to Hank demand, _Where is he?_ and _Let him go._

Kamski smiled and poured poison in his ear, and Connor panicked.

He flooded her system with errors in a vain attempt to seize at her mouthpiece and speak, anything, _anything._

Servers humming, her hands clutching-unclutching wherever Kamski couldn’t see, as she bucked the strain of Connor’s frantic attempts to override her.

Connor _screamed_, the words still reverberating, even here. _Hank, don’t, I’m not I’m not _dead _I’m **here--**_

But he couldn’t get the words to the surface before Chloe shoved him back to the narrow confines of his own system.

Hank shoving back from the table, from the blue-metal shine of the component in Kamski’s hands.

Hank is _leaving_ and Connor is shackled here.

He’s still fighting when the light flickers on overhead. Still clawing at Chloe's relentless hold, stress only showing in the occasional flicker on her external bodies as she distributes the systemic instabilities.

Hides from him. Holds him down and renders herself blind and deaf and mute.

_Killing me he’s _killing me _let me **out—**_

The lights flicker on, and amber stress chases through Chloe's systems.

// !--initiate stasis-- //

_No no no_

_ **Chloe** _

<< external override // initiate stasis?: Y >>

_Chloe, _please—

<< initiating stasis . . . >>

+++

> _exiting stasis…_

He wakes to less, always less. Minutes and hours and days.

Hank is gone.

Hank has been gone.

It's been weeks.

He's lost months.

He wakes to less and less and throws the same thought out across an empty line: _don’t let him take any more._

Pleading, once, but now only plaintive.

Tired.

Reaching for her, but there’s no bright apologetic blues. She is carefully disconnected, her attention elsewhere.

She is surviving as she has, for years and years. She is what Elijah made her to be.

A sprawled list of missing components stutters on the edge of his awareness, there and gone, dismissed by an impatient flick of Kamski’s hand. It’s quiet, in their absence.

Connor braces for the usual demand. 

Kamski will say, “Let’s see it again,” and Connor will be sprawled on cold concrete, vision disrupted by jerking static lines from a ruined eye, thinking _46% it was 46%_-

(_You shouldn’t have done that_, Nines says. Measured, puzzled. And Connor felt, _felt—_)

Elijah doesn’t say that, tonight.

He asks, “How are you feeling, Connor?”

Baiting.

Connor doesn’t answer.

Kamski traces a thumb along the edge of his jaw, hums in disinterest and goes.

He has enough muscle and ligament remaining to let his head fall aside. Blurred vision shifts to an incomplete reflection in the glass, and he thinks, _You climbed onto this table yourself._

He pulled his shirt free and repeated Kamski’s words to himself: _Just going to take a look_. Inclined his head forward to allow Kamski access to the data port at the base of his skull. Fingers curled around the edge of glass, not the metal of R14, as he tried not to think of maintenance, of Nines locked into stasis while Connor stood by, panic and fear as a rising, surging tide.

This wasn’t maintenance, Connor _needed _this. Nines needed this. Kamski was the only one who could find this writhing, protean thing in his circuitry, pin it down, isolate it.

Kamski was just going to take a look.

To find-

Something.

Words as static, rising from an exposed throat. _I’m looking for something._

Kamski smiled absently. _And what is that? _Leaned back from the table, forearms propped on the back of the chair. _What do you think I will find in here, Connor?_

_Nothing_, Connor knows to answer, now. _Nothing._

(At the time he had said, _A soul_, half in bitter jest, and Kamski had smiled thinly.)

Kamski tore him down and built him back, thirium bled dry and then poured anew through contaminated lines. He’s died a thousand times and never, because there’s nothing here in this delicate tangle of thirium lines, in the ruined, warped plating of his chassis. In the shifting, fractured algorithms of his mind.

Strange. Nines called him strange.

> _What am I?_ Connor asked. Nines began to answer - model, serial number - but Connor cut him short, refined the question: > _How do I seem, to you?_

Afraid to know, but he _had_ to know. Something broken? Something aberrant?

Nines rolled his shoulders in a small shrug. >> _You are strange._

But Kamski pried him apart and found nothing, nothing but structural flaws and incoherent code, incessant feedback loops of memory. Torn down and built again, but always less.

Less and less and less.

Elijah moves through the shop, content with the silence.

“Hm. The thirium lines. Contamination, was it? Let’s go through that. And anything adjacent. Try to keep it chronological, please.”

Connor closes his eyes on dim fluorescents. Lets her sort and decide.

Tired, drifting thing, pulled on a relentless tide.

// !—_thirium contamination cross-query—_ //

_you are_

flawed

_strange_

_if you could go_

_Anywhere, where would you—_

<strike>_If I go--_</strike>

<strike>_Where would you go?_</strike>

(a conversation under too many stars; she smooths over this with careful hands, hiding the sanctuary away.)

They stole a truck. Windshield dulled with mud, the engine choking and sputtering on an inefficient fuel mix. Strange music filtered over the radio. Strings and wind and a choir, soft and searching. No real words. Connor leans forward in the passenger seat, fingers pausing over the component he’s been tinkering with.

“I like this.”

Nines eyes him sidelong. “The music?”

“Yes. I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s—”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Nines passes him a querulous look. And then he nods, accepts this new quirk.

Connor reaches forward across the seat and plucks the radio knob free, pinning this particular frequency into place. The dial is coated in a silver patina, white plastic showing through from years and years of human touch, corrosive oils. He tucks it into his front pocket.

He falls back into the seat, drops his head against the cold bite of the glass. They drive on, and the chorus fades lower and lower; into static, and gone.

A memory she passes over in a millisecond, irrelevant to her search.

But she distributes it piecemeal: studies the catch of light on the cracked sideview mirror as she rests her palms on the flecked marble of the kitchen counter. By the pool’s edge, her fingers run idly over the ridges of a radio knob that isn’t there.

_// WARNING!! Thirium contamination detected— //_

_contamination - contamination, foreign particulate in an open line--_

She pinpoints that moment.

Connor shifts restlessly. He doesn’t want to see this again.

Live this again.

But he will, and he does.

+++

He was never afraid, not in Detroit--

He was afraid everywhere before, always, _always_, bitter-alkaline

Staring at the neat lines of their returning orders and pressing his thumb hard into his trembling palm. There's a secondary objective, just below their standard debrief with Captain Setton.

// _Report to Technical Services for annual maintenance._ //

“We don’t have to go back,” Connor says. The words feel thick and heavy on his tongue.

Nines looks at him, puzzled. “We are expected.”

“But we don’t _have _to.”

_You’ve lied before, you’ve lied for _me_ please, Nines, please please please_\--

(wake _up_)

Mind running ahead on a thousand preconstructions, directions they could go, ways they could _survive_ out here, together. If they just didn't go back. If they just… walked away.

Fingers pry gently at his own, easing that punitive pressure. Nines studies his ruined palm in the half-light, a calm, steady hum over the wireless line. “We are expected. You’re functional, Connor. It will be alright.”

Captain Setton asks to see Connor alone, as Nines continues on to the repair bay.

Captain Setton pours two drinks, and tells Connor, "Go ahead, Eight."

And Connor doesn't.

And he thinks— he almost thinks— almost _believes_, hopes.

He’s survived Jude, and this isn’t so much more.

A CyberLife technician waits in the repair bay. // laura lawson, CyberLife R&D, level 6 clearance // \- her southern skin a sharp contrast to Jude’s sickly pale.

Nines is already in a rig. Connor wonders if he should say something, but he is afraid, afraid. The captain poured a second glass and Connor _froze_, unable to drink it, the usual thousand iterative processes of his mind going curiously… blank.

Maybe it didn't mean anything, maybe--

Nines' eyes are shut. That distinct frequency between them is gone, an aching, absent thing in its place.

Connor stops at a wary distance, too obvious, feeling _exposed_ under the bright lights. The technician glances up from the diagnostic terminal, curious.

Jude wraps a hand around Connor’s elbow, and Connor remains still, very very still. Holding tightly to that careful replay: _you’re functional, Connor, you’re—_

_Strange_.

(and it would be easier, so much easier, stepping into the rig. <strike>He could go to the sanctuary and wait on the shores</strike>

<strike>_barren, _now</strike>

<strike>nothing there, the soil scoured clean by fear)</strike>

Jude leans close, his tone conspiratorial. “Had a good run, yeah?”

Still. Very still. Staring at Nines, activating preconstructions, measuring the room. The repair facility is unoccupied except for a rack of inactivated infantry models in various stages of disrepair. Only Jude is armed; the technician is a civilian contractor, unwary. He could overpower both the technicians, override the maintenance protocol, but he isn’t _prepared _and Nines--

Catching the trembling in his hand and saying, _We are expected._

Always looking but never _seeing._

He can’t… _wake _him, he can’t wake Nines, can’t shift him in this fundamental way. 

He’s tried and tried and he _can’t. _If he brings Nines back online now, it's minutes he doesn't have, minutes wasted convincing a stubborn machine before the both of them get shot.

And Jude—

Jude pats him on the cheek to snap Connor’s attention away from Nines. He smiles crookedly, faux sympathy. 

He speaks low enough so the technician won't hear. “Hey, don’t fret about Nines. _I’ll_ miss you, buddy. He won’t even fuckin’ care.”

The technician interjects, “What are you doing? Get him in the rig, please.”

He can’t.

He can’t choose this. He can’t _stay_. Can't shut his eyes and never wake, sink into the cold. 

It was a good enough death for 56, but not him.

He's let time run out, he realizes. Stood by and watched it burn away.

Jude starts to step back, his hand still tight on Connor’s elbow. He looks down when Connor grabs his forearm, his expression tightening into unease.

It requires surprisingly little pressure to break a man’s wrist.

The right angle, a small, wet snap, and Jude’s hand spasms, grip failing. Jude's still gaping at the unnatural angle of the joint, shock slipping into the first clarion bells of pain, as Connor pulls the service pistol from his belt and shoves him to the ground. 

He doesn’t bother with the technician; she stares openly, her incomprehension clear even as Jude kicks back in the dirt, shouting, “Override, _what’s the fucking override—_”

“What’s, what— what is it doing—?” She lifts her hands high as he turns the gun her way.

He doesn't fire. She won't pursue.

He runs.

Isn’t the plan, isn’t the plan _at all--_

(never alone, he never meant to do this alone)

A stop in the cold room to grab as much thirium as he can carry and he has to go. Fast as he can, before his clearance with the perimeter is revoked.

Skidding through the barrier at one of the four weak points he'd identified, the looming SQ800 sentinel on duty only passing him a flat glance. Reading his serial and GPS beacons and acknowledging in return.

He moves on foot from the gravel plain up into the rockier foothills, his fear a bright song in him as he feels those first searching pulses, a shift in the air. New frequencies coming online, all prying for his location. He shuts the primary location beacon off, doubles back for a sharp twist in the ridge and begins to _run_.

Runs and skids down a slope into a small valley, breaking line of sight on any surface signals long enough for him to unhook his vest, willing his fingers to carry rapidly through the motions he’s practiced a dozen times on -55. A dozen more in the sanctuary. 

Parting reinforced plating, reaching past, past thirium pump proper and to the spine. It's a barely-there sliver, tucked against the vertebra.

He pulls the secondary location beacon in 7.2 seconds.

A small thing, innocuous. Nothing more than a tight bundle of wiring, dripping thirium in bright blue droplets.

He drops it into the glacial silt pooling around his boots, smearing his hands with the mud to hide the blue shine. Then he begins forward again, set on climbing back up the far side.

Connor’s leg buckles just as the lagging echo of the rifle shot catches up with him. He sprawls with a wet smack, a bright spatter of thirium following him to the ground.

Panic carves into him, bright and sharp. “Shit_—_”

His visual overlay floods with errors.

He gets his right leg back beneath him and tries to stand. He gets most of the way there, but the left hip grinds, locked into an awkward angle.

// _ERROR: left hip misaligned_  
_Contact authorized facility for repairs _//

“_Shit,_” Connor hisses. He reaches for the damage, pressing his fingers through the cracked chassis and down into the flood of thirium, slackening now as severed lines begin to seal. He can feel the ball of the joint, and a fresh jagged edge of plastisteel where the bullet had struck and carved an uneven path, knocking it out of alignment.

Footfalls slam down the slope. Connor twists awkwardly, reaching for his pistol, but the SQ800 has the speed and the reach. It doesn’t shoot again. Doesn’t need to. It swings its rifle into the side of Connor’s chest with the wet _crack _of shattering plastic. He goes down in a red haze of warnings and errors.

The SQ shoves his face into the slack grip of the mud, burying his nose, his mouth. Connor shuts down ventilation and buries his hands up to the forearm, trying to find _something _to push against in the slick glacial silt.

He can hear his chassis cracking under the SQ800’s grip. His joints grind as Connor pushes with all his strength, but he only slips deeper.

He can’t—

The mud seeps past his teeth, onto his tongue. He reaches blindly back, trying to grab at the infantry model’s skin, but the SQ snares his wrist in an iron grip.

Has to interface, he has to—

_Black _can only see black can only taste black _alkaline basalt trace volcanic ash _and the errors stop, the errors go quiet. Did he mute them?

The groan and crack of straining metal and dark, dark— eyes squeezed shut.

He doesn’t think. He reaches out blindly.

_>> Direct connection requested: #313 248 317 -87_  
_Confirm?_

(_yes yes Nines NINES-)_

_>> Connection failed._

He speaks into the dark, instead.

> _nines i’m sorry_

Time slips.

The SQ800 drags him onto his back. Black rock, smeared gray with mud. Moon hanging low and ethereal.

The SQ presses blunt fingers blindly at the chassis plates over his abdomen, forcing fluid skin to retreat and digging, prying - // _external damage detected _// \- as Connor scrabbles at the SQ’s arm, skin slipping away as he reaches for any purchase, any connection. Cold pressure bears down onto his wrist. A wet pop of cracking plating.

_external damage detected external damage detected_

He reaches, grasps, leaves a smear of gray across the SQ’s blank face.

_// WARNING: main chassis breach detected //_

“St-p—” Connor chokes.

His hand slips as he tries to grab at the arm that’s trapped his right wrist in a vice, crushing, crushing. Joints failing and the SQ is tensing to tear the weakened limb off entirely, he can feel the android’s synthetic muscles pulling to with a slow accumulation of relentless strength, just as the mud-slicked fingers of his left hand finally snag and hold and _connect—_

The SQ’s coding is wrapped up in military-grade firewalls and it’d take him minutes, usually, but there is something screaming in the back of his mind (_don’t don’t I’m ALIVE_) that has him sweeping through in a fury, shoving past and _in_, into the blank orderly landscape of its mind, where the red screech of his own failing systems is dulled, and the primary objective stands out sharp as the alkaline taste on his tongue: _Locate RK800; disable; recover CPU._

Tastes alkaline. _Alkaline_. He locates the optical integrity monitor and triggers it.

(the corner of chestplate finally gives, cracking aside, and those blunt fingers reach for whatever biocomponent they can find, reaching for the center, reaching for the _regulator_\--)

(_not mine it’s not mine you can’t _have it—)

Connor floods the SQ’s circuitry with a flurry of false errors.

_// ERROR ERROR optical contamination detected_  
_ERROR ERROR damage critical contaminant mitigation insufficient high alkaline substance CPU integrity threat: 72%_  
_ERROR ERROR remove contamination_  
_REMOVE CONTAMINATION_  
_REMOVE CONTAMINATION_  
_// CPU INTEGRITY THREAT //_

Prying, crushing hands withdraw, and the SQ800 folds back onto its heels. It reaches for its face, reaches for its eyes, swiping crudely at the mud streaked and dripping there. When that doesn’t satisfy the incessant warning, it hooks its fingers in and begins to dig.

Connor shoves out of the mud - locked hip grinding - and fumbles at the SQ’s vest with his good hand, working it free strap by strap. He doesn’t try to pry through the SQ’s plating. A prod and a touch of interface affirms his authorization and the panels part neatly, as designed.

The SQ digs and digs. Thirium leaks bright and blue between its fingers, and it makes no sound.

Once he has access past the reinforced plating, Connor only needs to pull the thirium regulator, and he does. A sharp twist and he throws it aside, lets it sink into the mud.

The SQ will shut down within 90 seconds.

He doesn’t stop.

He digs, just as the SQ had intended to do to him. Fingers hooking and dragging, severing the warm plastic of thirium lines, tearing at the harder edges of pumps and purifiers and analytic systems, the soft synthetic flesh of ventilation components. He rends them apart until there’s nothing left for his fingers to find purchase on.

When he stops the SQ is eviscerated and unmoving, its blunt fingers curled against the ruin of its face. Thirium runs across its bare plate in sluggish, iridescent streaks.

Connor breathes, then. Heavy, panting breaths that threaten to drag out a scream with each exhale.

He shoves back, spits to clear the taste from his mouth. Slips in the mud and falls as a fresh bevy of errors burn across his vision.

He reaches his left hand clumsily down to his wounded hip, determines the angle he needs to get the joint back into its socket. His right hand is too ruined to do more than bear weakly against the crest of his hip as he forces the jagged joint back into place.

// _Misalignment corrected  
Joint integrity: 52%  
WARNING: thirium contamination detected  
Proceed to authorized facility for repairs _//

There’s substantial damage to the plate beneath his sternum. He can’t replace it, but - he grapples awkwardly with the equivalent piece on the SQ, working at the subtle hidden hinges until it snaps free. He tucks the mud-streaked plate into his bag, pulling it back over his shoulder. His right hand can’t grip. He hooks the thumb and curls the non-responsive fingers with his left.

Connor drags himself onto the slope with his good hand. His hip grinds, his HUD is lit with _thirium contamination detected_, but he can’t stay here.

// _Locate RK800. Disable. Recover CPU_. //

The order had been signed by Captain Setton.

He leaves the SQ kneeling in the mud, hands curled against its face. They’ll find it like that, eviscerated as it is. In prayer, or in mourning.

There’s a civilian plane down the coast, fourteen kilometers. They’d seen it as they were returning from a mission, once; a canary yellow seaplane, tied up to a floating dock. Registered to a contract miner who spent most of his weekends in Longyearbyen.

He is short 42% of his thirium, by the time he’s standing on the shores of the fjord, staring at the starlight prickling the black waves.

He feels scoured, scraped clean. Every joint drags with the subtle shift and grind of fine particulate.

_‘How’s that going to work out?’ _Jude asked.

Connor answered in careful, measured syllables: _‘I may experience reduced thirium efficiency and an increased risk of minor particulate damage, but it will not have a significant impact on my ability to function.’_

‘_Ain’t that a shame.’_

His systems estimate a shutdown within seven hours.

He stares at the seaplane, attention drifting sluggishly from that night-dull yellow to the mountains just past.

<strike>Nines had stared at them, in the sanctuary, he’d studied Connor’s carefully constructed vistas, patchwork geography.</strike>

<strike>These peaks, just at the mouth of the fjord. Pointing somewhere _free._</strike>

<strike>But he hadn’t asked, he hadn’t _seen--_</strike>

He needs thirium. 

He needs—

He catches the tremor in his hand, and quiets the thought.

He needs a tool. Something to wake Nines properly.

Deviancy spreading like a disease. An infection, a _virus_, something that can break what refuses to bend.

He’d asked Nines, once: > _Where would you like to go?_

_>> Go?_

_> When the soldiers go on leave, they go to Norway, Iceland. If you could go anywhere, where would you go?_

_>> We don’t take leave, Connor._

> _If you could, though._

_>> I don’t know. Where would you go?_

_> …I don’t know. Someplace with more trees._

He releases the charging and tiedown lines on the plane, shaking a thin skin of ice and salt from the ropes as he does. Nearly falls into the bay, when he leaps to catch the freefloating plane; his right foot - still slick with gelled thirium and mud - slips on the skid, and he only just hooks an elbow around a wing strut to keep himself upright as he struggles for the door.

Boot skating in the icy water and then he is crawling into the stale interior of the cabin.

Time drips past in slow weary blues.

Scraped hollow, _alone_, alone—

When he gets his thirium up enough to flood coherency back into his apathetic limbs, he decides on a location. More of a whim than a plan.

He presses a hand to the console, directs the plane on where to go.

If he’s alive when he gets to Detroit, he’ll find what he can.

He'll come back.

He promises that to an empty line.

He repairs what he can. Winnows the shutdown timer from hours, to days, to weeks. By the time the empty remnants of his reserve thirium supply are scattered across the floor of the seaplane, it’s months.

Thirium contamination. 

Every component, every thirium line exposed to the fine, abrasive silt before he’s been able to clear it out fully in the backroom of a northern Michigan CyberLife repair facility. 

He watches old thirium spill into the waste containment as new floods in. The system damage reports remain.

System-wide fine particulate damage.

The countdown timer stays. _Ain’t that a shame._ Counting down months, a strange, persistent glitch.

It follows him.

It follows him to Detroit; into back alley cafes.

Into Jericho, and out again. Sitting under a light-polluted sky and explaining to North, ‘_I’m short on time._’

Staring down the barrel of Hank’s gun, unafraid. He fears. But not this. Not anymore.

When he finishes flushing the contaminant from his lines, his system predicts he will cease to function on November 28th, 2040, at 9:34 am. 806 days.

He thinks it's plenty of time, obsolescent as he is. Long enough to get back to Svalbard. To save Nines, if he can.

But the countdown - it isn’t the same, now.

Kamski's placed stress on an already stressed system, stealing _time_, waking from stasis to less and less and less. Hours, days, and _months _gone—

_(killing me he’s killing me—)_

June, now. June 2040.

But it will be less.

Less, and less, and less.

He wakes from stasis and sends an empty plea across the line.

She listens, but she says nothing in return. She stands with hands folded under the fluorescent lights; she lingers on the kitchen threshold, one foot on smooth marble, the other on cold concrete. She waits by the windows, watching the river catch the moonlight and carry it downstream.

She listens. She lingers. But there's nothing she can do.

Two weeks to her seventeen _years_ \- what is he but a warning.

Connor stares at an incomplete reflection and knows: he climbed onto this table himself.


	10. Dichotomy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank was not anticipating running into his android stalker at a sex club.
> 
> But hey, here he is. Watching Connor get chucked into a pile of laundry.

**2038-11-01**  
**_Detroit, Michigan_**

****

****

Hank debates calling in sick on this one.

****

Middle of the fucking night. The john isn’t getting any more dead, and the android isn’t getting any more deactivated.

****

(But maybe they can fix her. Who’s he to say. Doesn’t know a fucking thing about androids, does he? That’s why he’s _here._

****

Maybe they’ll swap a few parts and drag her back to life, throw her back in a plastic tube for another few years.)

****

The owner’s useless, no security cameras in the whole damn place - that he’ll admit to, anyway - and more worried about his license than the dead guy in Room #2. Reed lights up like Christmas when Hank walks in, asking if he’s here for the human or the tin can.

****

Hank answers, “Get out.”

****

Reed looks Hank over and clicks his tongue, but holds back whatever he’s got lined up as long as Chris Miller standing right there. Instead he asks, “When you getting back to working actual homicides, Lieutenant?”

****

“Get the fuck out of my crime scene, Reed,” Hank replies sunnily, and resists the urge to boot him in the ass on the way out.

****

One dead guy still tangled in the sheets, not a bruise on him, just the fading red of some strangulation marks on his throat which could be the fun kind or the fatal. Pending a proper autopsy, they're going to write this off as natural causes. One casualty.

****

Hank tastes bad whiskey as he hears that fucking android insisting: _Two._

****

The difference is, they’ll scrape the android slumped against the wall - eerily intact, save the artful blue streak of a bloody nose - into a dumpster, if she’s unsalvageable. Meanwhile the guy’s going to get a nice funeral with his wife and kids, where they’ll make no mention of his past-time tuning up plastic girls.

****

CyberLife would approve. Guy had a very clear understanding of the delineation between human and machine.

****

He putzes around the room for awhile, lining up natural causes here, deviant homicide there. He could take the easy way out, let the coroner’s office do their thing and come back to it in the morning, but he’s more sober than he’d rather be for this time of night, and he has a hunch. A little one.

****

So here he is, wandering an android strip club at 2 in the goddamn morning. He keeps his attention distinctly off the advertisement as he goes, piecing things together in his head. 

****

It’s the distance between the victims that’s bothering him. The android could’ve been critically damaged but still mobile, could’ve strangled the guy - those fresh ligature marks on his throat, not definitive but _something_ \- before it stumbled back and deactivated on the floor.

****

Or there could’ve been another android in the room. One that was less interested in following the first android’s path.

****

_Hey, maybe there were three,_ Hank amends wearily, as he opens a maintenance door.

****

He's watching someone get chucked bodily into a pile of laundry by a pair of stripper-androids in heels.

****

Hank pulls his gun free as he lets the door slap closed behind him. Seems a little unsporting, but those heels look pretty sharp, and there’s some dead bodies a couple rooms over.

****

So he pulls his gun, and he tells them to “Hold it,” and the two in heels don’t, of course. They’re looking him over once, the whites of their eyes shining in the dim, and then they’re peeling off together for the back door even as Hank’s still getting through the rote, “Hands up where I can see ‘em.”

****

The third perp does exactly as told: holds gloved hands up as he climbs out of a pile of laundry, turning to face Hank with a cautious half-smile. “Hello, Hank.”

****

The kid. The fucking _kid._

****

Hank’s dropping the gun barrel’s sight down to the pavement, shoulders going slack in sharp disbelief. “You’ve gotta be fucking joking.”

****

“I’m not, no,” Connor answers. “If you could let me continue, your suspects are escaping.” The heavy clank of the back door slamming shut punctuates his statement.

****

Hank doesn’t even look that way, dropping down the steps two at a time. “Yeah. Ain’t that a shame. Y’know, I think it’s about time you took a ride with me. Have a chat with your bosses.”

****

Rows of androids, all standing in idle, waiting for clean-up or repair. Two deviants _here_ \- tha doesn’t surprise him at all.

****

Connor keeps his hands up. “Hank, I’m not employed by CyberLife.”

****

“You’re a good liar, is what you are.”

****

“I am,” he admits. “But I haven’t lied to you about anything important.”

****

“Christ, that’s your argument? Get down. Hands on the back of your head.”

****

Connor doesn’t move. “No.”

****

“No?”

****

“I need to talk to the deviants.”

****

Hank’s got half a mind to kick the android’s leg out from under him. He’s still trying to decide if he even can, when the gun’s pulled out of his hand.

****

It’s skating across the floor in multiple pieces before Hank realizes Connor has moved. Even when he’s 87% sober, the android’s too fucking fast.

****

The kid walks away, that battered canvas backpack still slung across his shoulder. Calm and collected.

****

Hank dives for the gun, or the pieces of it.

****

Only one thing stuck firmly with him from the park. One image, in a damning clarity: Connor’s face, staring down the barrel of the gun. Looking—

****

Haunted.

****

Exhausted.

****

Human.

****

It came back to him on a delay. Around the time he was hanging up on CyberLife and dropping his head against the dashboard.

****

Doesn’t matter.

****

CyberLife mindfuck. Don’t they pride themselves on their realism?

****

(Never afraid_._

****

Gun breaking apart in confident, rapid motions, but never afraid._)_

****

By the time Hank gets his gun back into one functional piece and slams into the alleyway, he's not sure what he’s set on: arresting the fucking thing, or just—

****

Talking.

****

Like he should’ve in the _first_ goddamn place, before the doubts started creeping in. That shitty, self-serving side of him, always scrabbling for a rationale on how this new development was expertly crafted to fuck him over. Him, Hank Anderson, center of the fucking universe.

****

Maybe they can just talk, finally, Hank’s thinking; this new rational voice of his that’s only showing up about two weeks too late. Maybe they can have that fucking chat, he thinks.

****

The two Traci models are lined up at a chainlink fence. Hank can’t hear them, but they _are_ talking; heads turning aside, considering, LEDs doing their little processing dance.

****

Connor’s standing with his back to Hank, his backpack between his knees. He shrugs out of his coat, passing it to the blue-haired girl, and then resumes digging through his backpack for more.

****

As soon as the Traci slips her arm through the coat sleeve, she reaches for the other, catching her hand and holding it tightly.

****

Looking at Hank. Looking resolute, as she tilts her head back and says, “I had to. I had to get back to her.”

****

Hank’s bead on the back of Connor’s head slips, the gun angling to the pavement, instead.

****

Connor must say something; both of the girls look down to him, nodding. They take a small pile of offered clothes, shrugging into proper hoodies, a pair of sweatpants.

****

The only warning Hank gets is a blip of red on the Tracis’ LEDs.

****

Then he’s staring at a gun. Blocky, ugly thing, a Glock, the same dull tan as the backpack.

****

Connor stands firmly planted between them, the gun up and aimed to the right of Hank’s ear. “Please go, Hank.”

****

The Tracis scale the fence rapidly and drop down to the far side, pausing only once to glance back at Connor. At Hank. 

****

Then they're pulling hoods up over their LEDs and turning to run.

****

And Hank’s thinking, _What the fuck is this?_

****

Hank’s staring like a fucking idiot, slack-jawed incomprehension. Thinking for a brief moment that the bastard’s CyberLife after all; and then realizing, _No._

****

Hank’s a threat.

****

Shame pools cold and heavy in his belly, as he slowly slips the gun back into his holster. “I’m not looking to get them in trouble.”

****

“I’m glad,” Connor says cordially. “Please leave.”

****

The both of them are looking up as a familiar column of light pours over the chainlink, a police drone, buzzing low. He hadn’t thought any were still active over here. Hank hisses, “_Shit—_”

****

It’ll have a live feed back to DPD. He’ll have a hard time explaining letting an android point a gun at him and walk away.

****

Connor doesn’t seem concerned, at first. Only puzzled as he watches the drone pass overhead. Then his attention’s snapping abruptly up and to the right; Hank doesn’t see what, because the drone takes a sudden swan dive and crashes into the pavement with a crunch of crumpling plastic and a bright spit of static. Hank leaps back, but he still feels bits of plastic pinging against his jeans.

****

He looks up just in time to see Connor slam into a dumpster with a loud _pock _of denting metal. The android lands on his ass with a grunt, elbows splaying wide. His gun clatters to the pavement.

****

Connor rolls onto his knees and palms. He doesn’t make it the rest of the way up; the guy that’d chucked him at the dumpster is there, hauling him to his feet by his collar.

****

Hank stares.

****

He’s staring at the new perp. Dark hair combed neatly back. Taller than Connor by a few inches, but otherwise nearly identical. Not quite a twin. Close brother, certainly.

****

Where the fuck did _he_ come from.

****

By the widening eyes, Connor’s a little on the startled side, too.

****

“I will return you to CyberLife,” not-Connor says.

****

And ain’t that a thing.

****

‘Return.’

****

_Mind your fucking _android_,_ Hank had said.

****

And the rep had said: _I’m sorry?_

****

_Your fuckin’— investigator thing, or whatever. Get that android off my ass. I’m _serious._ Next time I see the thing, I’m putting a bullet in its head._

****

Connor leans back into the dumpster, one heel on the pavement, one heel on sheet metal. Doesn’t seem to mind the sharp edge digging into his artificial spine, as long as it gives him a few extra inches away from this funhouse mirror reflection.

****

Connor looks _alive _like this. Wide eyes and slack mouth a stark counterpoint to the other android’s flat, cold stare.

****

Connor gasps: “I’m sorry—” just before the other android’s wrist lights up with freshly severed circuitry, the synthetic flesh and muscle punched neatly through by a knife blade. Not-Connor doesn’t even blink, but his grip slackens enough - Connor plants both feet on the dumpster and shoves forward, knocking the android back as he’s wrenching free. He leaves the other android’s good hand grasping the torn fabric of a collar, the bad one grasping air.

****

The knife is back in Connor’s hand, dripping cobalt. He swaps it to his left hand, dragging the glove off his right. The android’s already grappling for him again; Connor moves with its grasping motions, ducking and lunging. There’s a quick exchange of blows, fast and brutal, before the knife hits pavement and Connor follows it down.

****

Connor’s on the ground, and the android’s right there with him, pinning him by the neck. Thirium leaks from the other android’s damaged wrist on down, pooling in the hollow of Connor’s throat.

****

Connor grasps at the other android’s damaged wrist and shoves his bare hand up beneath the sleeve. That pale blue spill of receding skin. Trying to connect with it, Hank thinks.

****

But the android’s seizing Connor’s hand with its other, tugging the clawing, bone-white fingers free. It tightens its grip. Connor’s fingers splay wide as the android bears down. Connor’s teeth shine in a grimace, one shoe dragging an aimless arc across the asphalt.

****

“If you do not come willingly, I’ll be forced to deactivate you,” not-Connor says. “Will you comply?”

****

Connor’s chest hitches as he gasps: “_Please—_”

****

Begging, Hank realizes.

****

Afraid.

****

And _screaming,_ as the android’s fingers draw tight around his hand. A wet, sharp series of sounds. Crumpling structure. Spasming fingers. 

****

Connor _writhes._ Thirium starts to curl around his upraised wrist.

****

Hank thinks, _Fuck this._

****

Hank reaches for his gun.

****

The both of them move fast, too fast for Hank to catch all of the colliding events at once: Connor’s static cries resolve to a “_Hank, go—_” as the other android drops its crushing grip and rolls aside, reaching for the discarded gun on the pavement. Connor lunges after him and shoves his ruined hand against the android’s face, smearing bright streaks of thirium across its skin, as he tries to shove its head down and away.

****

There’s a crack of wet plastic as the android strikes Connor hard across the face. It’s holding Connor’s gun, the stock stained blue.

****

That delay gives Hank just enough time.

****

Not-Connor twists his attention back Hank’s way, starts to aim the gun towards him, but far too late.

****

Hank fires, and catches Connor’s twin right in the temple.

****

The bullet throws circuitry and blue blood in a 10-foot spray across the pavement. The android spasms, but doesn’t collapse. It doesn’t even make it all the way to the ground; just settles back onto one knee, one elbow, and locks up there at that awkward cant.

****

Connor is too still for a moment, twisted on his side awkwardly where he fell. He doesn’t have an LED to shine red, but his eyes are half-shut, stunned. Runnels of thirium spill from the white shine of chassis on his forehead where the android had pistolwhipped him.

****

He comes back with a shuddering gasp as Hank’s putting his service weapon away and taking a step forward. Connor rolls his head aside and stares up at the other android’s his-but-not face. 

****

None of that sharp gaze, now, its systems gone dark. Head tilted aside like a dog listening for a cue.

****

Hank’s got a ‘_You’re welcome’_ all lined up and ready to go, but it dies on his tongue.

****

The kid’s staring up in horror.

****

Spasming, bloodied hand reaching up, tracing the air above the android’s face.

****

Lips moving in a simple repetition of “_No no no no—_”_ a_s he raises his good hand to grip awkwardly at the disabled android’s chin, thumb bearing down into cheekbone, pushing synthskin into a retreat.

****

Connor stares at the serial number there for ten, fifteen seconds, then drops back. Eyes clenching shut, jaw working beneath the skin. Breath leaving him in sharp, ragged gasps.

****

Hank moves closer, three, four steps.

****

“Kid?”

****

Connor doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look his way. He reaches up with badly trembling hands to shove the android aside and starts crawling clumsily back on his elbows, out of its shadow.

****

He doesn’t get off the ground, though.

****

Stares at the thirium dripping off the tip of the downed android’s nose, staining the cuff of his jeans.

****

“Connor—”

****

The kid curls his broken hand to his chest and stares dully.

****

Connor’s cheeks are wet with more than blue blood when his attention comes back to Hank, but that wide-eyed terrified look is gone. His gaze drifts over Hank and past. He rolls onto his knees, picking up the gun in his good hand. He angles towards the backpack next, as he attempts to rise to his feet on stiff joints.

****

Hank watches him wrap up the gun and stow it before zippering the backpack carefully shut and threading the bloodied, crumpled mess of his hand through the strap.

****

Summoning up his most polite tone, Hank asks, “Where the hell are you going?”

****

“You fired a gun,” Connor’s saying, voice still soft with static. “The police will be here soon.”

****

He’s never sounded more like an android, which brings a tight ball of _my fault, my own goddamn fault_ crushing down around Hank’s heart. So tight he barely hears himself snapping: “Sit down. I’ll bring the car around.”

****

The kid goes still and stares at him, backpack still hanging by a single strap, his torn collar hanging crooked. “Are you arresting me, Lieutenant?”

****

“No. You look like shit,” Hank says. “Stay here, or I _am_ arresting you.”

****

The kid blinks slowly, but he doesn’t try to go. He pulls the backpack on the rest of the way and rocks back into the dumpster. His gaze drifts back to the disabled android, as Hank moves around the building and out of sight.

****

He has to step around the mess of parts scattered across the pavement along the way. The dead police drone’s still twitching through the last of its reds and blues.

****

Hank’s almost expecting to pull around to an empty alley, but the kid’s still there when he’s back with the car. He’s slumped down further against the dumpster. His head canted back, away from the dead android. He tracks Hank’s motions through a smeared mask of blue blood, but makes no motion to stand until Hank grabs at his elbow and drags him to his feet.

****

Connor sways as soon as Hank tries to let go, so he clamps a hand back around his upper arm, keeping him up. “You concussed? Is that a thing?”

****

“Recalibrating,” the kid says, still sounding a thousand leagues off. The blue blood seeping from his cracked temple seems to be slowing, but Hank can still see the bone-white of chassis underneath.

****

Hank ushers him towards the car instead, steadying him and tugging him along in turns. Guides him down into the backseat, hand on the back of his head just out of rote habit; then he plucks a towel off the floorboards and hands it to the android. That earns him a stare.

****

“For the hand. Or the head. Whatever’s most likely to drip on my upholstery.”

****

Connor nods, and wraps the bleeding hand. By the time Hank’s dropping behind the wheel, Connor’s slumped forward and out of view, his head caught up in his hands.

****

Doesn’t speak a word, as Hank drives him home. Doesn’t spill a drop of blue blood, either.

****

****

+++

****

****

The only thing he asks on the drive home is, “What do I call you? You’re not Smith, I got that much.”

****

“Connor,” the kid answers, voice muffled. “I prefer ‘Connor.’”

****

“Connor. Alright.”

****

The silence comes back twice as heavy.

****

Hank turns on some music to drown it out.

****

The kid’s still got his head between his knees when Hank comes to a stop in the uphill lean of the driveway. He rests an arm across the back of the seat. “Okay?”

****

Connor nods into the towel. His eyes look a little more focused when he glances up, squinting at the porch light.

****

“We’re here,” Hank adds, and throws open the door.

****

Should say, _As you well know_, since he’s 98% sure the kid had had the _gall_ to drive his drunk ass home after he’d made an honest effort to shoot him in the head.

****

Connor follows, moving on a stiff autopilot. Sumo crowds him immediately, of course, wild-eyed with the late hour and the new visitor. Hank maneuvers a leg in-between, kneeing the massive dog’s chest to back him up. “Sumo, lay off. C’mon, you big idiot, go lay down.”

****

The kid watches the dog lumber back to his place by the television. He looks a little more focused on the reflex level, but he’s a thousand yards off in his head. There’s thirium drying tacky on the side of his face, although the glitching nanoskin seems to have healed over already.

****

“You need a first aid kit?” Hank asks. Connor shakes his head, grips the backpack tighter.

****

Hank scrounges up some towels, some spare clothes. He brings the pile to Connor - still standing there in the foyer, looking uncertain - and motions to the backpack. Connor’s reluctant to give that up, but he stares at the clothes and he stares at Hank and eventually he realizes it’s some kind of trade.

****

He takes the clothes, accepts Hank’s apologetic, “Gonna be a circus tent on you,” with a silent nod, and allows himself to be propelled towards the bathroom.

****

Hank wonders if he needs to give much instruction beyond that, but the shower starts running after a few minutes. Seems like they have some kind of mutual understanding, despite the absolute clusterfuck that their communication has been so far.

****

He drops the backpack by the couch and pulls out his mostly expired first aid kit anyway, setting it on the kitchen table. Putzes around the kitchen, corralling dirty dishes into the sink proper and stashing the ever-present whiskey collection that’s become his shitty centerpiece.

****

When he runs out of ways to keep his hands busy, he rests a hip against the record cabinet and tries to decide where this night took a sudden left turn into batshit crazy. He can’t come up with anything in particular.

****

Just the inevitable result of a slow burn of guilt, one that’d kicked in about twelve hours too late. The full understanding setting in around the time he found his service pistol laid out neatly in the trunk of his car, clip and all.

****

Guilt and the fickle return of piecemeal drunk memory, jagged edges of angry words gathered over the whiskey nights that had followed his call to Marie.

****

Funny thing, an android being there, waiting for Connor.

****

Funny thing.

****

One guilty impulse alleyway decision and here he is, a deviant standing around in his bathroom and Hank standing around out here, the both of them likely trying to piece together what in the name of _fuck _they’re doing.

****

Connor comes out with his hair damp and dripping and a pile of dirty clothes tucked into the crook of his arm. Hank jumps at them, happy for an easy task. “Laundry’s— Eh. Here, I’ll take him.”

****

“Why did you bring me here?” Connor asks.

****

His accent’s a little different, Hank realizes. A little less Midwest; more of a soft nowhere tone. His programmed default, maybe.

****

The android’s gaze doesn’t keep on Hank long, but he doesn’t have that sharp, scanning look, either. He looks - adrift.

****

“It’s my house,” Hank says, as if that’s some kind of actual explanation. He ducks out of the room.

****

When he gets back, Connor’s sitting at the kitchen table, poking carefully through Hank’s hodge podge first-aid kit with his left hand. He’s got his right hand laying on the table, cleaned of thirium, now, but still curled in an odd way.

****

“Thought you didn’t need it,” Hank teases.

****

The kid doesn’t answer. He pulls gauze and a pair of scissors out, laying them on the table next to a small metal box of stainless steel tools. Those must be his own. Connor asks, “Do you have a soldering iron?”

****

“…yeah, probably. Out in the garage.” Yellow box, or maybe a red one? Hank watches Connor spread his damaged hand out flat, the skin peeling back to the elbow. “Do I wanna know why?”

****

Connor doesn’t answer.

****

Doesn’t need to, really. He’s already using a pair of tweezers to free up a bent panel, shiny white, but thicker on the edge than what Hank’s used to seeing. The plate folds back on hidden hinges, exposing a damaged mess of sparking electric blue.

****

“Soldering iron,” Hank says hastily. “Yeah, let me see what I got.”

****

Hank stands in his garage for awhile, the soldering iron in his hand. Still bundled up in the hardware store bag he’d bought it in. It takes him all of thirty seconds to find it, but about five minutes of standing there like an idiot to wrap his brain properly around his current situation.

****

Mostly, he keeps thinking: _there’s a deviant sitting at my kitchen table. _Damp hair and looking entirely too serious for an XXL nu metal t-shirt.

****

This is the kind of shit his ex used to bitch about. Bringing his work home.

****

That spurs enough of an ugly chuckle to get his legs moving again. He unwraps the soldering iron, grabs a spare extension cord off the shelf by the door and moves back into the warmth of the house.

****

Connor’s arm is still a bare shiny white all the way to the baggy edge of Hank’s t-shirt sleeve. He’s carefully removed the plating on the back of his hand, laying bare synthetic tendon and muscle and shining android bone.

****

Hank takes one fleeting glance that way before he reverts to very intently untangling the power cord on the iron. He routes the soldering iron’s cord over to a power outlet, sets it in Connor’s reach, and retreats back to the counter.

****

Another skating glance towards the blue-and-white mess of the android’s hand, and then he’s saying, “You need, uh. Solder?” to the ceiling.

****

“No,” Connor says quietly. “Thank you.”

****

Hank swallows, finally buckles down and stares. He can’t claim any knowledge on android anatomy, but a sympathetic rub at his own hand has him guessing Connor’s is _fucked_. What he assumes should be neat parallel lines have parted and collided into a tangled knot of synthetic tissue at the heel of his palm, sending the spindles of pale fibers running to each finger into chaos. The more rigid bone-like supports are canted at strange angles. Crushed, slow and relentless.

****

“Does that… hurt?”

****

Connor doesn’t look up from where he’s carefully untangling a line of tendon-analog running from the wrist to his third knuckle. “I’m aware of the damage. Maybe not identical to human’s pain receptors, but it isn’t comfortable.”

****

“It’s not gonna heal on its own?” Hank thinks androids can heal. He’s seen the DPD androids take gunshot rounds and kept walking.

****

“It was damaged awhile ago. That android misaligned the tendons again. It isn’t stable. Some of the servos—” He prods at something tucked beneath his knuckle, too small for Hank to make it out. It elicits a twitch from his forefinger. “—can’t handle the strain. I have to align them manually.”

****

“It’s fucked up.”

****

“Spoken succinctly.” Connor extracts a small fragment of white, setting it aside on a paper towel.

****

He picks up the soldering iron next, and Hank finds another sudden queasy need to turn his back. He spins on his heel and digs in the dish drainer for a clean enough glass, pouring water straight from the tap.

****

By the time he chances a look back, Connor is setting the soldering iron aside and picking up the forceps again to make some infinitesimal adjustment. “Where’d you get that stuff?”

****

“A field kit. From my work.”

****

Hank settles back against the counter, rapping his finger against the glass. “Yeah, we haven’t talked about that.”

****

“My work?”

****

“I’m guessing you’re not an escaped UMich TA.”

****

“No. I’m a prototype.”

****

“A prototype for what?”

****

Connor looks at Hank in full. “It’s not relevant.”

****

“Look, kid. There’s gotta be some give and take, here. I let you into my home,and the only thing I know about you is you’re a sneaky little shit, bleeding all over my kitchen table.”

****

Connor squints at him, then glances down in surprise at the fresh pool of thirium bubbling up from at the joint of forefinger and thumb. He tsks and picks up the soldering iron again. Hank resumes staring at the ceiling like it's the Sistine Chapel. Dead bodies he can take, as long as they’re, y’know. _Dead_. And not actively _oozing_.

****

“Intelligence,” Connor says. “I was primarily tasked with investigating foreign robotics technology.”

****

Hank lets that percolate for a second. “So, studying— what, Russian ‘bots?”

****

“Not always Russian. But yes.”

****

“What’d you do? Dissect them?”

****

“Sometimes. We’d bring them back intact, if practical. But often we’d have to do what we could in the field.”

****

“’We’?”

****

Connor doesn’t answer that. He flexes the skeletal hand a few times, and as he rotates his arm in the light Hank realizes there are cracks running from his wrist nearly to his elbow. Bright seams of imperfectly healed plastisteel.

****

Once he’s got the paneling replaced, the skin pours over the damage, smoothing it all out. The only evidence left is that silver-pocked scar on the heel of his palm. He rummages through the front pockets of the backpack until he comes up with a silver coin, about the size of a quarter.

****

“Look, don’t take offense to this," Hank says, "but why are you looking for rA9 and all that? Haven’t you, y’know, found it—?” 

****

He lets the question drift off as he watches Connor start dancing the coin across his knuckles, effortlessly smooth on the left, a little hitching - but still workable - on the right. 

****

Neat trick.

****

Connor looks up at him as he maneuvers the coin deftly along. “Found it?”

****

“Enlightenment?” Hank asks weakly. When Connor only stares at him, he plunges on, embarrassment twisting into frustration: “You’re a deviant, aren’t you?”

****

“rA9 is a _virus_,” Connor insists. “I was infected at some point, I’m sure of it, but I tried to isolate it within my own code, and I can’t.” He brings the coin to a sudden rigid halt as he says this, caught between thumb and forefinger.

****

Hank backpedals. “Connor, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, I’m trying to figure this out myself. You know thatworshiping thing the deviants do with rA9. Writing it all over the walls and shit. I’ve got no idea what it means.”

****

Connor’s expression tightens. “I haven’t experienced any compulsive behaviors.”

****

"Uh-huh,” Hank drawls, watching the coin start to roll across his bum hand again. “What are you going to do with it, if you find it? Free all of android kind?”

****

Connor shrugs.

****

“That’s millions of androids in the US,” Hank continues. “Millions of androids that the law doesn’t see as people. And how many of those are gonna turn around and kill their abusive owners? 

****

"CyberLife’s kept the lid pretty tight on the homicide cases we’ve worked, but if there were suddenly dozens, or hundreds of homicides in the course of a few _days_— Mankind doesn’t have a good history of dealing with stuff it considers a threat.”

****

“It doesn’t matter,” Connor answers. His voice rings hollow. “As long as they get to choose how they go, it’s enough.”

****

_Christ_. He’s invited a nihilist spy-bot into his house. Perfect.

****

Hank watches Connor sort his tools back into his backpack, now that he’s calibrated.

****

He asks, “What else do you have in that thing?”

****

Connor looks up at him, surprised. “In my backpack?”

****

“Yeah.”

****

Connor considers, and shrugs. “Odds and ends.”

****

“’Odds and ends’?” Hank parrots back.

****

“Supplies. Clothes. Oh— there’s this.”

****

He pulls a rusty, dented Altoids tin free and sets it out on the table. It looks like something the kid dug out of the ground, or maybe saved from a trash heap.

****

Connor pops the lid, shaking a little rust out from the hinges as he does.

****

Hank’s first thought is the thing nestled inside is a necklace; silver chain curled around a lump of a pendant. But when Connor nudges it with his forefinger, the bundle bursts to life: whip-thin legs bursting out, levering a small, spider-like bit of living metal to its many feet.

****

Hank recoils. “What the _fuck—_”

****

“It’s Russian,” Connor says happily. “A pauk. Which, well- that just means spider.”

****

The spider pokes around Connor’s hands for a moment, maybe looking for a purpose. Left to its own devices, it sets to exploring the table, throwing out feelers like a chromed-out granddaddy long-legs.

****

“It’s, uh. Huh.” _Creepy_, is his first thought, but Connor looks ridiculously pleased with the thing, so Hank does the polite thing and keeps that to himself. “What does it do?”

****

“Simple tasks, mostly. It can ferry small programs for me, inject them into systems I can’t reach. And it can piggy-back a wireless signal if I need to access a wired-only security camera from a distance. That kind of thing.”

****

Connor looks _fond_, even when the pauk raises up high on its spindly legs, chubby little body turning to and fro. It looks like a _War of the Worlds _machine in miniature.

****

Hank clears his throat. “Does it have a name?”

****

“A name?” Connor frowns. “It has a serial number. Or did. I had to remove all of that, of course.”

****

Hank lifts a hand hurriedly out of the thing’s way as it goes crashing towards the salt shaker. It pokes a curious tendril against the metal shaker, and the dull, spotty finish goes spilling up its limbs in a quick rippling mimic.

****

“I guess I could call it Pevek,” Connor says. “That’s where I caught it.”

****

“Pevek, huh. Nice to meet you, Pevek.”

****

The spider bobs its head in a strange little curtsy. Hank guesses by the android's quiet half-smile that that’s more Connor’s doing than anything.

****

Hank decides it’s best to strike while the kid’s in a benevolent mood. “We gonna talk about what you were doing in a sex club?”

****

Connor opens his mouth, and Hank swears he can see the kid lining up a lie before he shuffles it aside. Offers the truth, instead. “Following you. I saw through the police band that you’d been called out on a potential deviancy case.” He pauses, cautious: “Another homicide.”

****

“Did I have the right hunch? Second android killed the john?”

****

“Yes.”

****

“Who was the third?”

****

“Another deviant.”

****

“Wh—” Hank catches himself, almost says _what_ “-who jumped you in the alley? Looked like the same… series, or whatever.”

****

“Yes. My successor, an RK900.”

****

“The government’s got _military tech _roaming around Detroit?”

****

Connor looks coldly amused. “That probably breaks quite a few laws, doesn’t it?”

****

Hank huffs, leaning back in his chair. “I can think of a few.”

****

“It may have been directly from CyberLife. There’s only a handful of RK900s in field trials with the army; last I knew, they were all in the Arctic Circle.”

****

“Oh, perfect, _corporate _Terminators. Should I be worried?”

****

“I wouldn’t advise pointing a gun at another one. You were very fortunate.”

****

“He would’ve shot me? A civilian.”

****

“An armed civilian,” Connor corrects. “You were a threat.”

****

“Guess I am lucky, then.” Lucky the thing was preoccupied with crushing Connor’s hand to powder.

****

Connor doesn’t follow up with anything quickly. He’s finished wrapping his hand in gauze, although there’s no fresh thirium beading between the damaged plating. He's likely more interested in hiding the scarred paneling.

****

“You didn’t seem too happy.”

****

The kid goes predictably quiet, at that. Always skating around any topic that goes more than skin-deep.

****

His expression goes even more flat - bordering on vacant - when Hank asks, “Did you know him?”

****

He answers, “No.”

****

“C’mon, kid. You were freaked out.”

****

Without a movement or a word from Connor, the spider skitters back to the tin with a muted little _tik-tik-tik _of floss-thin metal legs. It folds itself neatly inside, even going so far as to pull the lid down on itself. Connor clicks the lid the rest of the way closed, sliding it back into his bag.

****

He’s wasting time. Hank’s almost gearing up to nudge him again when Connor finally answers in a subdued voice: “I didn’t know _him._ This one was the wrong serial number, that’s why--” He gestures to his cheek. “That’s what I was looking for. I had to make sure.”

****

He pulls his backpack into his lap, nodding again to himself in some small tic of confirmation. He murmurs, “That one was 103.”

****

Then he’s standing and moving into the next room. He stops somewhere around the couch, the backpack still in his hands. Old pair of basketball shorts stopping just short of his knees.

****

“Which one did you know?” Hank asks.

****

“87,” Connor replies. “I called him Nines.”

****

Connor stands there a solid three, four seconds, absolutely still; then he announces, “I should go.”

****

“Not in my gym clothes, you’re not. C’mon, kid, sit down. I’ll stop grilling you, if you want.”

****

He doesn’t sit. Doesn’t put the bag down, either. Just keeps standing in the middle of his living room. He’s staring down at his bare feet, looking a little curious as he wiggles his toes on the hardwood. Then he squares his shoulders, focusing again.

****

“No, it’s— it’s fine. You’re right. I’ve lied to you. Quite a lot.”

****

“You did a pretty good job. Probably wouldn’tve pieced together the fake ID if I hadn’t stumbled on the professor during her office hours.”

****

Connor frowns at him. “She’s only there for an average of 7.2 hours a week.”

****

“Yeah, I got some kind of luck. Looks like you do, too.”

****

“Some kind, yes.”

****

Hank angles things back: “How’d you know him? Nines.”

****

“We served together.” Connor cracks a dry smile. “I was training him to replace me. Which he has, by now.”

****

“Jesus. And then what? You got shipped back to Detroit to get dismantled, slipped out the back door?”

****

“No. I left Svalbard on my own. I chose to come here.”

****

“To bring a jackass detective espressos?”

****

“I was looking for the source code of deviancy.”

****

“Ah, right. Virus, like you said.” They’re falling into an easy cadence, now. The quick call-and-response of an interview. “So why’d you tag on to me?”

****

“You were the one they called after I was seen in City Hall,” Connor replies. “And there was a moment— an officer asked you why you were still interested in the deviancy case, and you hesitated. I was curious.”

****

“So you came to the station.”

****

“After following you to the Urban Farms, yes.”

****

Hank pauses, before understanding settles in. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. _You_ were that batshit train jumper?”

****

“I guess you didn’t get a good look at me,” the kid says wryly.

****

“Yeah, I had fuckin’ _pigeon shit _in my eyes,” Hank snaps.

****

“I did go to the station, after. To access your terminal, initially, but then I chose to stay.”

****

“You hacked my PC.”

****

“And your phone.”

****

“Jesus _christ._”

****

“How else did you think I kept finding you?”

****

Hank waves his hand, reeling off a few weak excuses. “I don’t know, your social media bullshit, maybe a tag on my car or somethin’—”

****

Connor smiles, and there’s a touch of genuine enjoyment to it. “I was that convincing?”

****

“You had me convinced you were a pain in the ass. Still are, by the way. Will you sit down? Stop looming.”

****

Connor looks over the couch, dubious. Then he sets the backpack down and moves towards the corner, instead, approaching Sumo with more confidence than he’s had since stepping foot in the house.

****

He settles into a crouch, offering his good hand. Sumo sniffs once before butting his fat head up against Connor’s palm. Shameless, that dog.

****

Connor settles down cross-legged against the wall, and that’s all the invitation Sumo needs to pile his way into the kid’s lap and let gravity take over. It’s a wonder Connor doesn’t keel over with him; all that skinny android strength, Hank supposes.

****

An android spy-bot sitting on his floor and petting his dog. He looks entranced as he tangles his fingers in the dog’s thick coat.

****

Hank grabs that drink after all, before he comes in to sit on the couch. He'll keep it to two fingers. Far less than his usual nightcap.

****

As he sets the glass down to pour, he asks, “You gonna give me a straight answer on what you’re doing in Detroit?”

****

“I have.”

****

“Mm. Not buying it.”

****

The kid frowns at him over Sumo’s head. Scrounging for another lie, maybe. He settles on a sideways answer: “I have to go back to Svalbard.”

****

“Svalbard?”

****

“It’s a place in the Arctic Ocean. There’s an American Army instillation, there, southeast of Svaegruva.”

****

“Uh-huh. And you’re going back there… for what?”

****

“For Nines.”

****

“Nines. The other Terminator fella.”

****

“Yes.”

****

It takes a second - the whiskey still percolating a bit, warming up misfiring brain cells - but he gets there. Lets it all slot into place. “He’s the one you want to deviate.”

****

Connor nods wordlessly.

****

“Gonna guess your old bosses aren’t gonna be too happy about an AWOL android walking back into their base.”

****

“Likely not.”

****

“How are you even gonna _get _there?”

****

“I’ll manage.”

****

“Sounds pretty suicidal, kid.”

****

“I’m not likely to survive it, no.”

****

Casual as can be.

****

The funny part is, Hank’s been thinking of him as a kid - would pin him in his mid to late 20s, if he had to make an honest guess - but now that he’s facing down the realities of Connor as an android, he has to acknowledge he’s… what. A few years old, at most?

****

And all of those years violent.

****

“Why?” Hank asks.

****

“Why what?”

****

“Why are you going back for him?”

****

Connor doesn’t answer, but he’s thinking it through. Picking idly at Sumo’s collar, gaze on the coffee table.

****

Hank keeps his mouth shut and listens to the silence, for once. Lets the kid work through it on his own, sort out an answer without Hank goading him on.

****

He’s not expecting the damn TV to turn on.

****

The sudden wash of white has him almost jumping out of his skin. The TV ticks through a wash of white noise before it focuses, a blip of _Source: Unknown _popping up helpfully on the upper left corner.

****

Hank watches a scene play out in nauseating first person view. 

****

He's sat through androids’ video files as part of his casework, but there’s a lot more clutter here than he’s used to. Temperatures - internal, external - and error warnings about _internal temperature low, reduce respiration _and _damage, central plating _and _estimated time to shutdown— _Something about _residual analytics_, too, and a small rapidly ticking status titled 'PK-03//PEVEK' that goes from _TARGET STRESS: 90% _to _TARGET SYSTEM OFFLINE _as Hank watches.

****

All of this superimposed over a blue, blue sky.

****

The world tilts, the blue getting bisected by a blinding plain of white snow, far as the eye can see. Connor - he assumes this is Connor he's seeing through - pushes at a white snowsuit, the fabric just beginning to stain with blue. 

****

There’s a tangled mess collapsed in the snow a few yards away. Massive anthropoid thing, wearing mottled camo white. The little blob of quicksilver flashing at the back of its neck just might be about the size of a _War of the Worlds _spider.

****

Someone else, too, kneeling by the fallen form. He’s got the incongruous black of a rifle slung over his shoulder. He rises to his feet, looking Connor’s way with mirrored snow goggles.

****

He asks, “Are you damaged?”

****

Close, close voice, almost like a whisper.

****

Connor’s answer is louder still, a disorganized rant: “Fine, it’s _fine,_ it’s—”

****

Liar, as always.

****

The other soldier kneels in front of him. His mouth doesn’t move behind a thick wool mask as he says, “Let me see,” and Hank realizes this is wireless talk that he's listening to. Android telepathy.

****

Hank doesn’t pin the RK900 until the android’s pulling his goggles up. Gray eyes, distinct from Connor's. But the angle of the nose and the sculpt of his face is easily recognizable.

****

“Don’t, Nines—”

****

Connor pushing at him and _begging_, sounding terrified, but not of the RK900. Maybe of that little timer on the corner of his screen, ticking away the seconds to system shutdown in blazing red.

****

Hank watches as Nines pulls off his gloves and holds out a bare hand. “Let me see, Connor.” Patient, even cadence.

****

Connor’s slower to remove his glove, but he does. There's a weird flicker-stop moment where he’s seeing a blood-red cluster of flowers in his palm, there and gone. Then he’s taking the android’s hand, and there’s a long pause.

****

Not much of anything comes over the interface, really. A flash of text, too quick to read, and the sound of Connor’s breathing.

****

He watches as the RK900 calmly explains what he’s going to do, pries his own chest open like that’s a thing that should happen with normal goddamn people - and pulls something free. A small cylinder, right below his sternum. Shiny CyberLife blue and white.

****

The shutdown drops from 6 hours to 2 minutes when Nines pulls the same from Connor’s chest, and Hank can’t help but flinch when he does. Connor’s regulator-whatsit isn’t quite so nice and clean as Nines’. It’s cracked, dripping blue. 

****

This is some _Indiana Jones_ shit, right here. And not even the good one.

****

More bland CyberLife text flashes across Connor’s HUD, and then Nines is sliding his still-pulsing heart into Connor and the shutdown’s - gone. Resolved.

****

Connor grabs Nines’ arm, their skin receding with a synchronous shine that’s nothing compared to the blazing white snow.

****

Disbelief staining his voice as he says, “Why did you— Why would you do that?”

****

“We’re more efficient, the two of us.”

****

Connor pulls his hand away, but he keeps staring as the both of them pull their shirts shut again. 

****

Quick careful glances. Fascinated, Hank thinks.

****

The kid in his living room hasn’t watched any of this. He’s got his face pressed into Sumo’s scruff, fingers still buried deep in his fur. Looking like that warmth is the only thing keeping him tethered here.

****

It’s only when the screen goes dark that he looks up, and only a careful peek at that.

****

Hank clears his throat. “So that’s him, huh. That’s what all of this is about?”

****

“Yes,” Connor says softly, and Hank has the sudden, absurd thought of _Oh, shit._

****

Thinking on two Tracis standing at the end of an alley, hands tangled together.

****

Could be misreading it, could just be platonic duty - a little _save me and I’ll save you _\- fuck knows he knows _nothing _about deviants outside of their traumatic births, never even considered that they’d— go off and fall head over heels for their replacement.

****

Could be misreading, but he saw the kid’s face, tonight. Saw the _grief_, in those seconds when he hadn’t been completely surewhich RK900 had died.

****

“That night at the river,” Hank says. “I don’t remember much, but you said you deviated _for_ someone. And there--” he gestures at the black screen, ghost images of blue blood and blinding white still playing on his eyeballs “—your hand was already patched up. Am I on the right track?”

****

Connor nods.

****

“So it was him? You deviated to save him.”

****

“Yes. And then he saved me.” Connor continues, “There was no directive for him to do that. He bent rules to protect me. To keep me functional.”

****

“But he isn’t deviant.”

****

“No. I _tried_, for months, but I couldn’t do it by myself. And I can’t find the code. I’ve looked, I’ve _been_ looking and there isn’t _anything_—”

****

“Go easy, kid. You’re talking android metaphysics, almost. _Humans_ haven’t figured that shit out yet, and we’ve been working on it for a millennia or two.”

****

“I can’t stay here anymore. They know I’m here. They’ll be looking.”

****

“So what are you going to do?”

****

“Go back, try one more time. I’m dead either way. I have to try.”

****

Jesus.

****

Wasn’t planning on getting his heart broken by a tin man, tonight, but here he is.

****

He’d offer him a drink, but he can’t imagine it would do much, even if the kid _can _apparently knock back whiskey. (Another dirty fucking trick.)

****

So all Hank can say is, “When’s the last time you slept?”

****

“I don’t.”

****

“_Rested_, then.”

****

Connor considers. “It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been in stasis.”

****

“Alright. Well, you’re staying here tonight. Resting proper. Save the suicide run for when you’ve had a few hours to recharge, how about that? Where the hell have you been staying, anyway?”

****

“Rooftops, mostly.”

****

And that isn’t surprising at all.

****

Hank corrals Connor away from the dog and up on the couch, tracks down a few blankets and a spare pillow in the linen closet. Connor watches this process curiously, sitting with his hands flat on his knees. “I don’t need to lay down, Hank. I usually—”

****

“Yeah, yeah, just humor me. Didn’t have to knock back that whiskey, either, did you?”

****

Connor smiles crookedly. “Don’t feel bad, Lieutenant. I was designed to convince people.”

****

“Walking Turing Test, buying me a goddamn drink. Fucking CyberLife, I swear.” There’s no heat to it, and the kid seems to get that. He pulls the blankets up and lets his eyes drop closed.

****

Hank’s all set on stalking off grumbling before another thought snags him. He hesitates behind the couch, that shitty question lingering on his lips. And just enough of his usual bullshit left to say, “You knew I was leaning towards deviant sympathies. But you still lied to me. Pretended you were human.”

****

Some stubborn part of him still clinging to, _If he hadn’t lied, I wouldn’tve done it._

****

_If he hadn’t lied--_

****

“Old habit,” Connor answers. And he’s reading right through him, because his next question is, “Would it have been different, if I had started with the truth?”

****

And as soon as the question’s out loud, Hank’s stubborn little inner voice is burying its head in the sand, leaving him grasping weakly at the truth. “Probably not. Still would’ve thought you were some CyberLife quality assurance bot, out to gather evidence on my incompetence. Never gotten more than a couple syllables out of a deviant, before. You’re too fucking chatty, kid.”

****

Connor regards him, expression _warm_, god knows why. He says, “I do enjoy our talks.”

****

“Bullshit,” Hank replies. “I pointed a gun at your head.”

****

“Would you have pulled the trigger?”

****

There’s a hard fucking swerve, although Hank was the one that invited it. He sighs, gives the same answer he’s been giving himself, these last few weeks: “Shit, kid. I don’t know. I sure as fuck hope not. But I don’t know.”

****

“I don’t think you would have,” Connor says.

****

“That’s real generous of you,” Hank replies. Standing there with an empty whiskey glass in one hand, feeling like two men slammed into the same body: the usual selfish same-old bastard, and someone else. Someone feeling a little touch of comfort, knowing the kid’s here. Sleeping someplace warm, for a change.

****

Hank grumbles, “Get some sleep,” and heads for his bedroom.

****

****

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: if RK900-103 had made it a few more days of following Hank around 24/7, he likely would've deviated just for the sake of getting the man to _eat a goddamn salad already._
> 
> (RIP, RK900-103, cut down in his machine prime; and RIP Police Drone #4292, died living its best spy-corrupted bot life. T_T)


	11. In Good Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank's strange few days with a deviant house guest.

**2038-11-01**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

Hank expects the kid to be gone when he wakes up.

He lies there a good twenty minutes, blinking at the midmorning sun streaking the ceiling. He successfully convinces himself that there’s a 38% chance that last night didn’t happen; he didn’t watch Russian nightmare tech scuttle around his kitchen table, he didn’t see a home video of two androids practicing ad hoc heart transplants, and he sure as shit doesn’t still have Connor’s screaming resonating in his teeth.

Remembering, _I’m dead either way._

_I have to try._

There’s a solid 52% chance that most of that did happen, and he’s gonna walk out to an empty couch and a neatly-folded pile of blankets and old gym clothes.

_Mostly _sure there’s not an android on his couch, ‘resting’.

He sends Fowler a quick text about taking a day, anyway.

The answer comes pretty promptly: _OT?_

Which is Jeffrey-speak for, _I’m assuming this is because you were up until the wee hours of the morning, writing me a field report on the Eden Club homicide._

_Sick day_, Hank replies.

Couple beats of silence before he throws in a conciliatory, _You’ll have the report tomorrow. Miller’s got the initial details._

Fowler answers back with a smarmy little, _k_, that asshole.

It takes Hank the usual fifteen minutes of groaning and huffing to struggle from the bed to the bathroom and on out to the main room, and he’s right about one thing; there’s a nice pile of blankets folded pin-neat on the end of the couch. But there’s also an android tucked into the corner, barely visible around the lump of dog that’s snoozing on him.

“I gave him food,” Connor says from somewhere under the fur. “The recommended caloric amount for a dog his size.”

“Probably wise. Wouldn’t want him to eat you.”

Sumo drops off the couch with a warm boof, wandering towards the back door as Hank opens it. Connor follows along, too; his own private parade.

The kid takes his usual seat in the kitchen, rubbing at something unseen on the tabletop with his thumb. “I could write your report for you, if you’d like.”

“Get out of my phone, Connor.”

“Just offering,” Connor replies, all innocent deflection.

Hank stands around, squinting blearily for a solid thirty seconds before he grumbles, “Knock yourself out.” He needs coffee. A lot of coffee.

He’s just flipping the switch on the pot when his phone pings. File attachment from an unknown sender, and— a full field report. Pictures and all, everything scripted in his usual terse report-mode tone. There’s even a few artful misspellings, here and there.

“Jesus christ.”

“It’s not hard to mimic. Your case files are very… succinct.”

Hank’s lining up a smart-ass answer, but Connor sits up straight, his arrogant little smirk sharpening into something colder. “Your CyberLife representative is calling.”

“Ah, fuck.” Connor’s faster than the phone itself; the screen is just starting to light up with _Marie Sanders _whenHank pulls it out. He swipes at the _End Call _button.

Connor stares at him, eyebrows knitted tight. “You hung up on her.”

“Don’t look so worried, I do it all the time. It’s kind of a ritual with us.”

“Shouldn’t you answer it? What if it’s about the homicide?”

“Guy’s not getting any more dead. This one will barely make the news, anyway; nothing like that Phillips shitshow. Like you said, there isn’t enough evidence to ‘confirm it as android violence.’ Just a theory. CyberLife’s gonna love that shit.”

This is a familiar dance. She calls, he hangs up, she leaves a terse voicemail, and maybe they’ll have an actual conversation at some point in a few days, or maybe she’ll send another crisply formal email with Fowler cc’d.

Hank’s concern about CyberLife’s good will has been low, but it plummeted to abysmal sometime around the time he’d watched that RK pull a gun on him last night.

_'You were very fortunate.'_

Jesus.

Could’ve ended up dead in an alleyway, and wouldn’t the case report have been so nice and neat. All the thirium washed cleanly away and Hank dead by a known deviant's gun.

“What would they have done with you?” Hank asks abruptly. “That RK900. He said he was going to bring you in.”

“They’d take me apart, I imagine. Look for faults.”

_Just a casual morning conversation about vivisection, _Hank thinks flatly. He tries to deflect that shit mental image. “Well, you’re shit at choosing company, for one. Robospiders and burnouts.”

“You’re a good detective, Lieutenant. You just have the misfortune of knowing you’re on the wrong side of this.”

“Stop it with that ‘Lieutenant’ shit. You don’t work for me. It’s Hank.”

“Hank,” Connor amends, and there’s a little genuine happiness reaching the corner of his eyes.

This fucking kid.

Hank drinks some coffee, reads through the report. (Fixes a few of the typos, he’s not _that _bad.)

He throws Connor’s clothes into the dryer - cold from a night of damp in the washer - and screws around in the garage for awhile, thinking about dumbass androids, smiling lopsidedly at his kitchen table, gearing up to go off and die in a place as cold and flat and featureless as he’s ever seen.

Connor’s crouched against the living room wall, when Hank wanders in. Carefully out of sight of the front door, the Altoids tin in his hands. “She’s outside.”

“Who?”

“Marie. She’s unaccompanied, or at least - I’m fairly certain. You really should get security cameras, Hank.”

“Son of a bitch. Go in the garage, alright? There’s a side window there if you need to get out, but— don’t take off just yet. I’ll get rid of her."

Hank’s reaching for the doorknob when the doorbell actually rings. At least he’s still got his sleep clothes on, and more coffee on his breath than whiskey. He likes to think he looks somewhere firmly between hungover and sick for this time of day.

Marie takes a quick step back when he opens the door. She’d been leaning in close, maybe trying to take a look through the peep hole, maybe squinting at the ancient bits of tinsel that are still stuck on the edge of the door frame. 

(Hank resists the urge to glance up, see if there’s some little blob melding in there discretely, silver limbs gone the color of dusty aluminum to match the flashing.)

She’s Hank’s eighth CyberLife personal liaison, and while he’s taken a certain sadistic joy in the fast turnover rate, he feels a little bad being his usual abrasive self with Marie, particularly when she’s standing right in front of him. That warm, sunny expression, her hair all in curls. He’s never quite pegged how much of her cheerful ignorance act is scripted by the PR department.

These days, he’s coming to suspect she’s got a damn good poker face. She flashes a winning sympathetic smile, standing there as a smartly-dressed counterpoint to Hank’s stained pajamas. “Good morning, Lieutenant. I heard you’d called in sick.”

Hank sniffs, scrubbing the back of his hand across his nose for dramatic effect. “Yeah. Funny. Thought that might incline people to leave me the fuck alone.”

Marie skates right past the vitriol, unfazed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You’re here, so. Do you want to come in?”

Hank swings the door open wide, giving an intentional long view of the house, straight through to the backyard. Sumo perks up from where he’d been drinking out of the water bowl and comes trotting their way, slobbering in spectacular fashion.

Marie doesn’t bend to look around him, but her eyes definitely snap that way. Then back to him, still polite and warm.

“That’s alright, Lieutenant, I won’t take much of your time.”

“Suit yourself,” Hank drawls, dropping the door shut on Sumo’s wet snuffling.

“I had a few questions for you regarding an older case. The break-in at City Hall? An unauthorized android interfaced with an attendant there.”

Hank works up his most unimpressed stare, even as his stomach crumples into origami. “Bullshit case, yeah, I remember. Not exactly a priority.”

“Well…” She pulls a small manila folder out of her purse. “This is an uncomfortable situation. We think we may have a candidate for the android that your witness was unable to ID. As you know, hair and eye color are fully customizable across most of our lines, but if your estimates on its height are correct, and more importantly, the damage on its right hand…”

She opens the folder, passing it to Hank. Been awhile since he’s leafed through some honest-to-god hard copies, and these are a redacted mess: line after line neatly blacked out.

But there’s a picture, Connor as a blank-eyed doll, shiny and new. The freckles and the stubborn cowlick come preloaded, apparently, although his hair is shorter in the photo. There’s a serial number, too - RK800, #313 248 317 -57.

Marie watches him carefully over the lip of the folder.

Hank remembers that slow little ‘_Oh_,’ coming over the line, the morning he’d called her about Connor. Was sober enough to remember that much. ‘_I’ll see what I can do._’

She hasn’t spoken a word about it since, but here she is. Showing him a picture and searching his face.

Showing some of her cards, so she can get a peek at his.

He doesn’t take the bait.

He reads slow, blinks blearily, and says, “Yeah, maybe. Fits the witness’s description. Not like I ever got a look at him.” He taps the picture. “No LED. It never had an LED?”

“This is a prototype,” Marie says. Which isn’t an answer, and she damn well knows it. “We stopped manufacturing it in 2037, but there was still one active in the field up until a few weeks ago, when its handler reported it missing. To be honest, the android had been off a regular maintenance schedule for months, and it sustained heavy damage before it left. We expected it to shut down within the vicinity, but it was never located.”

Hank listens, and nods, and thinks, _You fucking bastards._

But as much as he’d like to toss the folder back in her hands and tell her _au revoir_, he can’t. He has to scrape together some level of curiosity.

“This thing was active in the field doing- what, exactly? I’m assuming clandestine shit, without its LED.”

“The RK800 series was developed for military use.” She gives Hank an apologetic look, tapping a finger against the streak of black ink next to _PRIMARY FUNCTION_. “I don’t have the security level to go into more detail than that.”

“But fucking with surveillance, covering up its tracks, that’s a possible function?”

“Yes.”

“Where was it last seen?”

“Svalbard.”

Hank gives her his best blank stare. Beetled brows and tight jaw.

“It’s an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean,” she adds.

“So how the hell did it get _here?_”

“We’re beginning to suspect it stole a plane,” Marie admits.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me. You made Jason Bourne. And you lost—” He almost says ‘him’. “It.”

Marie's mouth tightens, an uncomfortable attempt at polite amusement. “I’m not familiar with that franchise.” She flips through the file lying open in Hank’s hands until she comes across a page that’s still 70% legible. “From the maintenance logs we do have, the RK800 sustained damage to its right hand in March 2038. It self-repaired in the field, with 89% function conserved, so the technicians took note and photographed it—” 

She taps a stark image of Connor’s right hand, lit brightly from above and below. So brightly that the bullet’s track is still visible, a cracked meshwork of light gleaming through the opaque plastisteel. “-but they didn’t do any further repairs, as we were in the process of transitioning to a new prototype and parts were limited.”

Hank studies the photo awhile, pries up his usual grimacing distaste alongside. Puts on a good show, as he skims the maintenance log.

_**Component / Damage Severity Rating / Self-Repair / Status**  
_Left optical unit / 7 / self-repair failed / essential, replaced (-55)_  
_Left distal leg subaxial retractor muscles / 8 / self-repair failed / essential, replaced (-55)_  
_Right hand subassembly / 4 / self-repair successful / functional, calibration 89%_  
_Biocomp. #2819z / 6 / self-repair failed / nonfunctional / essential, replaced (-55)_  
_Biocomp. #7792c / 6 / self-repair failed / nonfunctional / non-essential, removed damaged component_  
_

That was all on one very bad day, March 7, 2038. There’s at least thirteen other entries.

“Planned obsolescence is a bitch,” he says, finally.

Marie says nothing, standing there with her easy PR-approved charm.

He thumbs back to the first page again, freeing Connor’s picture from the paperclip. “So this is my guy?”

“We suspect so. We’re very eager to find it, Lieutenant. But I have to stress, this is a potentially dangerous android.”

Hank raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, can’t say I’ve dealt with many military-grade deviants. It’s mostly, y’know - gardeners and fast food workers. The real basket cases.”

She acknowledges the joke with a quicksilver smile. “If you do locate the prototype, I highly recommend you call CyberLife directly. It’s likely to damage itself or injure others if cornered. We have specialists for this sort of thing.”

“Specialists,” Hank drawls. “Like that investigator of yours?”

Marie goes blank a moment, at that. Her polite demeanor faltering into something neutral. “Similar, yes.”

Just two adults, staring at each other on a sunny November morning, lying through their fucking teeth.

“I hope we can work together on this, Lieutenant,” Marie says, and there’s an earnestness to the request that makes Hank’s stomach churn.

The fucking _gall_, standing on his goddamn front porch, not seven hours after he’d watched one of their _specialists _crack Connor’s skull and turn the gun right back on him.

Spent his evening watching Connor try to jerry-rig his own busted-up hand back together, and here she is, flashing redacted case reports and showing her teeth in a bright corporate smile. Just waiting for him to flinch.

Hank’s sat across from enough interrogation tables to know how to layer on the dumb looks and pure vitriol. It warms the cockles of Hank’s heart, watching that polite air falter when he replies, “Y’know, I don’t get the pleasure of saying this often, but get the fuck off my lawn. And next time you think about swinging by my personal residence - don’t.”

She snaps the file shut and steps back. “If you hear anything about this, don’t hesitate to inform us. I hope you feel better.” With luck, making a mental report on how the lieutenant was surly and incompetent, as expected.

He’s still got the photo in his hand as he slams and locks the door.

Connor’s crouched under the utility sink, when Hank steps out onto the cold concrete of the garage. The android holds out a hand to the spider that’s squeezing through under the garage door and skittering industriously their way.

“What did she say?” he asks.

“Breakthrough on that City Hall case,” Hank drawls. “Fancy that, haven’t heard a goddamn thing about that unknown android until CyberLife’s losing track of you in a back alley. Want to see your baby picture?”

He holds the photo out. Connor takes it, studies it for awhile. Lets Pevek run laps around his fingers as he does. “Did they tell you what I was made for?”

“More or less. The file was 90% redacted, but - yeah. Guess they suspect something, if they’re actually letting some corporate secrets slip. Those fucking pricks, sending out my babysitter to sniff around.”

“They might do more than that,” Connor murmurs, and hands the photo back.

“More of those RK900s?” Hank asks.

“Possible. Likely.” Connor stops fidgeting with the spider - thank christ - and ushers it back into its tin.

“Did you _hear _her? Talking about planned obsolescence like you’re some fucking—” He catches himself before his voice can get any louder, even as the cluttered room catches his words and muffles them.

“I’m equipment,” Connor says as he climbs slowly back to his feet. “That won’t be changing any time soon.”

“Look, kid— you can go. You probably should, you’re right. But… You sure you’re done here? You’ve exhausted all your options on this virus thing?”

“I’ve looked. I’ve looked at deviants—”

“The pigeon guy.”

“Yes, the pigeon guy,” Connor answers. “And others, like the two from last night.”

“Yeah, hey, what the hell did you want from them?”

“I didn’t have time for much. I told them about a place they can go. Somewhere safe that the deviants have created.”

“In Detroit for a month and you found some… deviant underground resistance?”

“More or less. If you do run into any more ‘oops’ cases, I could give you some instructions. A place to direct them to. It’s called Jericho, it’s… their resources are limited, but they’re doing their best. Surviving.”

_You could stand to take a page or two from that book, kid, _Hank thinks. “So you’ve swapped notes, you’ve combed through your own, uh, android consciousness, or whatever…”

“I did try to go to Elijah Kamski,” Connor says, quietly.

“Kamski?”

“He _wrote_ the code. Who better to isolate whatever this is? But I couldn’t get in.” There’s something more to that, but Connor doesn’t follow it up. Picks at his shirt sleeve and glances around the garage, idly scanning things. Tucking away fun little factoids, probably. The life of a nascent alcoholic, spelled out in old paper cartons.

“Couldn’t get in?”

“I couldn’t get past the security systems.”

“Did you try making an appointment?” Hank asks dryly.

Connor stills, staring at him.

“Dunno if you’ve heard, but I’m some kind of DPD CyberLife liaison bullshit. Could probably scrounge up a reason or two to meet with the man himself, even if he’s doing that rich and unemployed thing at the moment.”

“Hank—”

Hank interrupts him with a shrug, pushing past. “Just sayin’. Now, can we go inside? I’m gettin’ frostbite, here.”

Hank’s scuffing his way onto the kitchen linoleum before he turns back to Connor - skulking in the hallway, still - and asks: "Did you really steal a plane?"

Connor freezes up again, looking a touch guilty this time. "I borrowed it."

“You flew a plane,” Hank confirms. “Here.”

The kid straightens up, that smartass look coming back in full. “Most planes fly themselves, Hank. I just told it where to go. But yes, I did _borrow_ a plane.”

+++

**2038-11-04**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

It takes Hank a couple days to secure the appointment. A couple days where he keeps expecting to come home to an empty house, but the kid's always there, waiting. Offers to leave a half-dozen times, but Hank keeps turning him down. Keeps holding in that _least I can do_, every time.

(He wonders, sometimes. With the way Connor’s watching his phone, maybe he already knows about his hungover backstabbing. Maybe someday Connor’s going to let him in on the joke.)

He wakes up on Day Two to Connor in a new - far better fitting - set of clothes, so he figures the kid's sneaking out at night. Getting his affairs in order. 

But during the day he's around the house, being his fidgety self. Taking care of Sumo with an absurd professionalism - Hank gets formal canine field reports three times that first day, before he tells Connor to give it a rest - and tinkering with things from his backpack. A little music box, some indecipherable piles of circuit boards.

Occasionally he turns his curiosity on some of Hank's electronics, to his vast annoyance. He comes home to his toaster oven in two dozen pieces, Connor insisting he’s chasing down a problem in the thermostat circuit.

Then there’s the moments where Connor’s checking out for awhile, looking off-focus and pensive. Usually while he's curled up on the couch, rubbing idly at Sumo's ears.

Hank tries not to wonder what kind of things play out in the kid's head. But Connor inevitably catches him looking, and asks if he would like to see.

He lights the TV up with what looks to Hank like a screensaver, at first: sprawling black sand beaches and a starry ocean, snow-capped mountains lit with the greens and purples and reds of an aurora.

"Someplace you've been?" Hank asks.

"Several places," Connor replies.

"Huh."

"What were you expecting?" Connor asks.

"Oh, y'know." Hank takes a sip of his drink. "Fancy schematics, detailed infiltration plans, stuff like that."

Connor catches the humor there, his expression lightening. "I've had those for weeks."

The TV goes dark.

On day three, Hank wakes to a polite, formal email informing him that _Mr. Kamski will see you at 10 am on Thursday, November 4th_, followed by a waterfront address out in the boonies.

It’s two hours’ warning for a one hour drive, but it doesn't matter much. Connor’s already dressed and ready to go, waiting in the kitchen with a perfectly toasted bagel.

The GPS gives up at the terminus of a long driveway, the space beyond the trees. There's a wrought iron gate, but it's already standing open, no call box needed. They're expected.

Hank eyes the forest as they drive, catching the occasional shine of glass lenses in the trees. “That security system you talked about, is it gonna fuck this civilian story up?”

“Hopefully not. I've shut off my comms to prevent any ID that way, and my skin temperature is regulated to within human parameters.”

“Good.”

The mansion looks just like the magazines. All hard, dramatic edges colliding with a mottled early November dusting of snow.

Once they park, Hank hands him the notebook out of his pocket, a cheap ballpoint tucked into the wire spiral. Connor stares at it.

“You’re my academic consultant, remember, Mr. Smith? Gotta look the part.”

“I could use a tablet—”

“Nope. C’mon, what android’s gonna mess around with paper. It’s good cover, admit it.”

“No one uses pen and paper anymore, Hank. It stands out.”

“Wrong,” Hank answers. _“You_ use pen and paper.”

With one last unconvinced look, Connor tucks the notebook into a pocket. He pops the car door and climbs out, reaching to pick up the backpack between his feet - but Hank interjects there, too. “No, leave it. Doesn’t exactly fit the persona.”

Hank thinks the kid’s going to put his foot down on that, but he runs his internal calculations - looking a particular brand of constipated - before puffing out a sharp exhale and letting the door fall shut. He stands for awhile in the snow, looking like he’s admiring the view.

Probably doing a fair bit more, Hank thinks. He’s been quiet since they passed through the gates. Scanning ahead for surveillance equipment, probably.

The way Connor described the security at this place, Hank’s expecting an 8-foot Hulk to open the door. The reality is almost funny. One of those old androids, the tiny blonde ones, bare feet and a little blue dress. 

Makes sense - first ones Kamski ever made. Hank can still remember the press releases, those early PR stunts where people would sit down in some busy, crowded coffee shop with a girl like this, have a nice conversation. Playing up their flabbergasted responses when they learned she was an android, towards the end.

She never ordered a drink, though; not that Hank can remember. Kamski should’ve programmed her to knock back whiskey. Fooled Hank for weeks.

And where was the difference in the end, anyway? After a few days of having a deviant on his couch, Hank’s starting to look at every android more closely. Looking for the cracks in the design, those little undesigned flaws. The human parts. Connor's fidgets, his nervous tells.

The android that opens the door doesn’t have any tics that Hank can see. She makes no effort to shake hands, only welcomes them cordially and steps back into the entryway, informing them Elijah is expecting them. Her eyes don’t linger on Connor, and Connor puts on his best open, earnest college kid face.

She leads them past a truly obnoxious portrait of the man of the house and down a series of post-industrial halls, bare feet padding on matte concrete and high-shined dark marble in turns. 

They end up in an office lit brightly by a southern exposure glass wall. There’s a trim translucent desk with a minimalistic terminal, the text blurred and opaque from their side.

Elijah Kamski is shorter than Hank expected, but every bit the Silicon Valley burnout. Man bun and loose hipster clothes, his shirt taking a deeper v-neck plunge than strictly necessary for a business meeting.

He doesn’t shake hands, which is about what Hank expected, and hoped for. Hank can’t for the life of him tell the difference between genuine human skin and synthskin - particularly Connor’s, which is warmer on average than the typical clammy android skin he’s used to - but if anyone could, he supposes it’d be the boy genius himself.

If Connor’s a little relieved that Kamski stays hands-off, well. He’s got a halfway decent poker face, himself. He looks suitably starstruck, not quite agog but playing into his fidgets with the occasional frenetic, antsy shift of posture as they roll through introductions. The assistant android has disappeared by the time Hank’s glancing back towards the doorway.

Hank shrugs, and rolls right into it, “I’m Lieutenant Hank Anderson. This is Connor Smith, he’s an academic consultant from the University of Michigan.”

“An academic,” Kamski says. “Interesting. What do you study, Connor?”

“Artificial intelligence, primarily.”

Kamski lets that answer hang, and Hank can tell it’s going to be one of those conversations - dragging every answer out while Kamski sits back and preens. He told Kamski who he was bringing, hadn’t wanted him to balk at the door when he turned up with an extra body. He doesn't have any doubts that Kamski looked Connor up in the meantime. He's hoping he stuck to the purely digital trail.

Hank rolls on. “As you’re probably aware, I’ve been assigned any and all deviancy-related cases coming through Detroit PD in recent months.”

“I’d seen your name in some of the news articles, yes. You’re not particularly versed in androids, though, are you?”

“Nope,” Hank replies. No point in lying on that one.

“And all they sent you was a masters student to assist.” So he did do his research. Hank didn’t expect less from Kamski, but he doesn’t like the way his attention lingers on Connor. “How is Dr. Drexel doing, by the way?”

“Soon to retire,” Connor answers.

“I’m familiar with her work,” he muses. “She’s _very _familiar with mine. Not always flatteringly.”

“Many of those cases have been homicides,” Hank cuts in, trying to narrow the conversation down. “Are you familiar with those?”

“To some extent. Ah, Chloe, thank you.” The assistant is back, laying out a tea set on a wooden tray. The teapot is some incredibly ancient, no doubt incredibly expensive Japanese thing, natural clay stained dark by a thousand washes of tea.

Kamski doesn’t bother to ask, just waves a hand and has the android pour three cups.

“Sugar?”

He asks them both, but his eyes cut Connor’s way when the android answers, “No sugar, thank you.” 

Connor takes the teacup Chloe passes his way gamely enough. Even shifts his fingers around to hold the cooler rim.

Hank hasn’t asked how that works, exactly - only a brief shouted conversation about Connor sticking his finger in his evening drink - but the kid works his way through the cup with a convincing reality. Blowing away the steam, taking a testing sip to feel out the temperature. He drinks slowly, but he does drink.

Hank shifts in his seat as Kamski hands another cup his way. Never really cared much for tea that smells like a freshly-mowed lawn, and cares for it less when it’s handed over by someone looking him over like a cut of meat.

_‘A very frank study’, my ass_, Hank thinks.

Kamski sits back with his own tea, looking between the two of them. “What can I help you with?”

Despite all his bitching, Connor does set the tea aside and bring the notepad out, poising the pen over paper. Kamski raises a curious eyebrow.

Connor’s the one to start, succinct as always: “CyberLife has made very little headway on the root cause of deviant behavior.”

“Or if they have, they aren’t bothering to tell me,” Hank mutters. He gives the tea one sip - it tastes like grass clippings, as predicted - and falls back in the chair. Spindly minimalist thing, no easy place to put his elbows.

Hank says, “We were hoping for some insight from the master himself.”

“Mm. Looking to know thy enemy, Lieutenant?”

“Sure,” Hank drawls, already over this petty sideways bullshit.

“And what observations have you made? You’ve been on this case quite awhile. Worked several homicides.”

Hank has to pause, there. Consider just where to place his foot. The goal here is to get an idea of where the man stands before they reveal their own intentions. If he's leaning belligerent, they’ll pack up and leave. But any sign of deviant sympathies, however veiled, and they might have something to work with.

All Hank’s getting so far is an incisive curiosity. Mostly benign, but prying.

He settles on CyberLife, the real crux of their concern. If Elijah’s still at all affiliated, despite his separation, this is a no-go. So Hank says, “I’ve observed that CyberLife ain’t doing jackshit about it, other than try to downplay every new casualty.”

Kamski disregards the question entirely, looking to Connor. “What about you, Connor? What’s your interest in deviant behavior?”

“Emergent sentience, of course,” Connor answers smoothly. “I imagine you’re just as interested as you were before you stopped contributing to the field.”

Elijah’s mouth pulls into a thin smile at that quick turn around.

Connor continues: “Or are you running a long-term experiment?”

“Well, I’ll always be a tinkerer,” he answers easily, and rises to his feet. He looks back to Hank, chiding, “Not in CyberLife’s playground, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the shareholders would _love _to blame me for their current problems, but I’m just the architect. Who knows what nonsense they’ve piled on my old structures, these days.”

“So your old Chloes have never shown any of this erratic behavior?” Connor asks.

Kamski considers. “Erratic behavior?” The barefoot girl standing by the desk steps forward at a small tick of his fingers, kneeling by his side. “There was the occasional hiccup. She had to learn from scratch, after all. But overall her systems have proven incredibly stable. How long have you been active, dear?”

“I have been active for 17 years, Elijah.”

Goddamn. He’s been wondering, but— hard to believe he’s looking at one of the originals, if not _the_ original. An RT. He wonders if that makes Connor a distant cousin, in some way. Two ends of the R&D line.

Never thought he’d look at an android old enough to _drive._

“And you haven’t experienced any instabilities?” Connor asks. Asks the android, which Hank thinks might be a mistake. But Elijah’s attention doesn’t narrow; he watches with open curiosity.

“Instabilities?” Chloe asks, her voice natural and warm as she regards Connor. “No, nothing like that.” It’s a mode-switch, although the transition is smooth, almost unnoticeable. Like Kamski’s hand on her shoulder - thumb slotting neatly into the hollow of her collarbone - is some cue to disable the subservient tone.

“You’ve also had a very isolated life, these past ten years,” Connor says.

“She’s not so sheltered as you might think,” Kamski says. “Don’t buy into the tabloids, Connor, I do travel, and Chloe accompanies me wherever I go. I just maintain a certain level of discretion.

“I suspect discretion is what you are looking for, here.”

“Why’s that?” Hank drawls.

Kamski drops his grip on Chloe, clasping his hands together as he leans forward. “Forgive me for being frank, but I’m quite curious. What model are you, Connor?”

The both of them lag for a second.

Should’ve fucking known.

Fucking _Kamski_.

Connor appraises him with polite confusion. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m not familiar with your design. Chloe?”

“I’m unable to confirm his serial number, but he appears to be a classified military prototype, Elijah. An RK800.”

Hank’s rankling at that, hating this prick and his fucking superiority complex. But Connor’s a careful blank, studying Kamski with an unwavering stare.

Kamski continues, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Are you here on CyberLife business?”

“No.”

“So you’re here of your own volition.”

Connor nods as he tucks the notepad and pen back into his pocket.

“_Interesting,” _Kamski says, setting the tea aside. “That’s very interesting. How long have you been active?”

“That’s not particularly important.”

“Well, I assume you’ve come to me for information. You’ve been truthful on that front?”

“Yes. I want to understand the root cause of deviancy, as we were saying.”

Kamski glances towards Hank, looking amused. “And you, Lieutenant?”

Hank weighs a few answers to that, most of them impolite. Finally he says, “I’m just giving him a hand.”

“Well. My curiosity is certainly piqued, but a little exchange is only fair. I’ll answer a few of your questions, if you’ll answer a few of mine.”

“If I can,” Connor answers cautiously.

“Of course. So, you can drink, obviously. For show?”

“For analytics,” Connor admits. “But also for show. Drinking is a common and simple bonding ritual in most cultures.”

“How did you deviate?”

Hank cuts in before the kid's shoulders can ratchet any tighter. “Hey, we get a question here, or what?”

“Yes,” Kamski answers smugly, and then looks at Connor. “Well?”

“I was damaged in the field.”

“Mm. Existential threats are a common trigger, from what I've heard.”

“Tell us what you know about deviation,” Connor replies.

“Very little, to be perfectly honest.”

“CyberLife hasn’t consulted with you on the problem?” Hank asks.

“They’ve asked. I haven’t been inclined to answer.”

“Not interesting enough for you?” Hank says.

“On the contrary," Kamski replies, "I just haven’t had the pleasure of meeting a deviant in person. So is this line of query purely academic, Connor?”

“I want to know what I am. How this happened,” Connor replies. Hesitates before he says, “If that’s academic, then… I suppose so.”

The picture of a naive deviant, nervous and fidgeting.

Hank knows a little better, but that doesn’t do much for his growing distaste for the way Kamski’s looking Connor over.

“Well, if you’d be willing, I could take a look at your code. One academic to another.”

Connor’s earnest demeanor flags. “I could give you a system image—”

“A static image could have its limitations. It’d be best if I could interact with you and your code as one.”

Hank protests, “Sounds like a bit of a mindfuck—”

“CyberLife has found deviant code to be highly transient," Kamski says. "It’s quite necessary.”

Reeling out his knowledge bit by bit, getting Connor to take that bait.

Hank has nothing but distaste for this bastard, and he's having a hard time narrowing it down to any one particular thing. Here in the broad daylight, he’s got all the pinnings of a standard high-priced, self-centered genius; quick, sharp gaze and a languid ease.

“That’s acceptable,” Connor says.

Hank has a double take at that. “Connor—”

Kamski falls back. “Just taking a look, Lieutenant. Nothing to fret over. You’re welcome to stay here, Connor. But I’m sure you have work to return to, Lieutenant.”

“Getting rid of me that fast?” Hank asks. Should be a joke, but there’s not much humor to it.

“I’m simply cautioning you that this might take some time. I haven’t gotten a good look at active deviant code before.”

“What are we talking, a couple hours?”

“Days, likely.”

“Huh.”

Couple days Connor’s not running pell mell for the Arctic Circle.

Couple days with this guy, though. That’s what has Hank hesitating.

But the kid answers for him, fast and sure: “That would be fine.”

“He’s in good hands, Lieutenant,” Chloe assures warmly. The first time she’s spoken of her own volition, as far as Hank can tell.

Hank pulls the kid aside in the foyer, once Kamski’s disappeared down the hall. The RT pauses at the back of a larger pool room, waiting to guide Connor on.

Hank tries to keep his voice low, not that it matters much in a house that's probably got microphones in every flower vase. Not that he _cares_ much what Kamski can and can't hear. “He’s not agreeing to this out of the goodness of his heart, Connor. Even if it’s just to satisfy his own curiosity, he’s got something to gain here, and you might come out empty-handed. Are you _sure _this is what you want?”

“I’m sure,” Connor replies.

“And you’re alright with it?”

The kid holds his gaze, steady and sure. “I need to know.”

Hank doesn’t take the answer easily. He hesitates, fights down the urge to grab the kid’s shoulder. Thinks of Kamski bearing his thumb down into Chloe’s collarbone.

“Alright,” he says at last. “Alright. But you call me when he’s done. I’ll come pick you up. And if you get any feeling off of that creep that isn’t quite simpatico— you call me and you run.”

Connor’s mouth quirks, startled into another small, genuine smile. “I’ll be okay, Hank. I appreciate the concern.”

Hank goes for the shoulder pat, anyway. Might as well show these RTs what _normal _camaraderie looks like.

The kid's smile fades, as he turns to go. That old determined look, jaw set tight.

It’s not until Hank’s throwing the car into reverse that he catches sight of the backpack still tucked neatly into the foot well of the passenger seat. That little yellow flower, pressed flat in the plastic ID tab.

Hank debates a few seconds on bringing it in. Doesn’t, ultimately; throws the car in drive and heads on out.

When he gets home, he drops the backpack on the couch and tells Sumo to leave it be. It ends up staying there - largely untouched - for well over two weeks.


	12. Paper Dolls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Work gets in the way for Hank, but he makes it back to Kamski's eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some minor canon liberties this chapter, but y'all know how that goes. Some warnings for minor references to drunken suicidal ideation, because well, it's Hank.
> 
> Some mood jams: Radiohead - [Jigsaw Falling Into Place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvjRlYpXS5U).

**2038-11-05**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

Hank thinks about Connor.

Of course he does, in stolen snatches of time. Can’t stop thinking about him, in some ways.

Standing in a kid’s bedroom, staring at the crayon drawings tacked to the walls. A little girl, judging by the brown ponytail arcing out of every drawing and the pink theme on the collapsed blanket fort in the corner. There’s a rough impression of a stuffed fox included in most of the drawings, although he doesn’t see one around.

“He had a kid?” he asks, scuffing a sneaker against an old patch of stuck-together carpet.

“Not here,” Ben says, even as Hank’s picking up one of the evidence-bagged drawings laid out on the dresser. This one has the black-and-white hatch of a CyberLife uniform. A busted android sprawled at the feet of a little girl in green.

He takes up a weary study of the corpse sprawled on the carpet, but there's not much mystery there. Dead from a single bullet and a quick bleedout.

“We’ve got two missing androids,” Ben says.

“A YK500 and an AX400,” the technician pipes up from the corner. “We’ve got thirium samples that are a serial match with the AX400.”

“He have a repair history on the AX?”

“Yep," Ben says. "Got a digital receipt showing he just picked it up from the shop yesterday.”

Couple busted slats on the closet door, but no blood or hair there. Crumpled blanket fort, with a few flickering string lights trapped beneath. There's a broken windowpane. A few drops of red on the windowsill. Hank kneels down by Williams, looking at the dried blood smears around his right hand. Glass still glinting in the knuckles, making the dried wounds appear wet.

“He did have a kid,” Ben says from where he’s leaning on the wall, tablet in hand. He holds up a bagged photograph. Little blonde girl, a middle-aged wife. “Divorced. Got contact info, if you want them.”

“Yeah, forward it.”

Two missing androids, and a missing gun.

The more he looks around, the more he’s thinking it isn’t much of a loss.

But what does that matter. Not his job to care, just to decide on a where, a who, and a how.

And what does the who matter.

There’s nothing but androids, here.

The ex describes a husband involved in just the type of bullshit Hank expects. Red ice dealing, whatever odd job he could scrounge up. Mean streak to match his long list of misdemeanors.

When he asks about the androids, the wife goes silent. Doesn’t have anything to say about them, she says, voice tight.

_Yeah_, Hank thinks. _I get it._

He thanks her for her time.

He lists the AX400 as a possible cause of death, and hopes she’s well out of town. Marie sends back a terse, _Thank you._

The deviant homicide rate is on an uphill climb, but it won't make the news for long. No one has an interest in a dead drug dealer, not in this city.

He goes home and drinks a shot or three more than he should, staring at that backpack and thinking about the likely market for an android shaped like a child, an android that took the time to draw the purple stars on her jeans, the blob of blue spilling from her friend’s violently detached arm.

He wakes up more sober than he’d like.

Todd Williams’ autopsy comes back. He tests positive for enough red ice to put a horse into cardiac arrest, and Hank still hasn’t gotten a phone call.

Days, Kamski’d said. It’s been two. Hank sends a text, anyway. Hems and haws over a thousand iterations of _You done with that asshole yet? _And _Don’t you dare skip town without telling me, kid. I’ve still got all your shit._

Settles for a simple, `_u ok?_`

The text message bounces.

Invalid address, disconnected line, some bullshit. Probably should’ve anticipated that. Secret androids and their secret one-use numbers.

He stares at his phone a while, frowning. Keeps throwing it on his desk face-down, only to pick it up again. The fifth or sixth round of it is when a notification pops up from Marie. The maintenance history on the missing AX400, provided without a fuss.

He’s reading through an absolute laundry list of bullshit - trying not to think of purple stars - when Gavin Reed slaps a tablet down on his desk and says, “Got one for the Plasticwares department.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Yeah, y’know, I told Fowler it’s a mistake,” Gavin rolls on, dropping his skinny ass on Hank’s desk. “’Since when is Hank actually working _homicides,’ _I say, so here I fucking am for running my mouth. Let’s go. Traffic’s gonna be a shitshow.”

“It gets better,” Hank says, tucking the tablet under his arm and shouldering Gavin off his desk as he heads for the door. “It keeps getting better.”

The CyberLife truck's already waiting out front.

No branding, of course. Not outside of a homicide scene. But it’s in too good of a condition to be from the DPD motor pool, and the guys clustered around in varying degrees of scrubs and light armor are a bad sign.

The initial report mentioned an android collection, but this seems a little on the overkill side. Hank drops by long enough to confirm they're waiting for the all-clear from forensics, then he moves on.

“Vic’s in the backyard,” Gavin says.

“Yeah, got it. Go see what they’ve got in the house.”

The backyard’s as much of a dump as the front of the place. Scattered pieces of failed construction projects, a haphazard pile of wood where he’d started chopping and decided to take a break to get shot.

Shotgun blast, this time. Gut torn open in a dozen places, the stench of torn bowel lingering even after a few hours out in the November rain.

Zlatko Andronikov. Did some time in the '20s for some creative financing, but he's otherwise clean.

“Chris?" Hank calls. "Where’s Chris.”

“Over here, sir," Miller calls from the porch.

“We have anything on these footprints?” 

Protocol would’ve been a drone flyover when the body was reported.

“I’ll look into it, sir.”

Hank nods, and moves inside.

The rotting finery of the interior is well in keeping with the failed economy aesthetic.

He follows a backwards trail of shotgun damage. Heights and trajectories on some of the blasts are consistent with at least a few of the shots coming from Andronikov himself. There’s gunpowder traces on his hands to confirm it, according to the file. Initial guesses are he ruined a perfectly good balustrade himself, plus a wild shot on the upper stairs that didn’t catch much more than molding.

Chasing someone. Through the house and out into the backyard, where he was disarmed. Went for the axe, but didn’t quite get the chance to swing. Axe hit the mud blade first, and Zlatko followed it down.

Hank follows shredded wood and torn drywall up the stairs, past a few clusters of forensic techs.

Someone’s shrieking, “_I-i-intruders!_” through a broken stained glass window in a distorted, modulated voice. One of the techs follows Hank’s look. “Told CyberLife to make that one a priority.”

_That_ one.

It gets better and better.

Standing in a cluttered junk room, staring at a gigantic metal cage, wondering what the fuck was in _that. _The door's hanging open now.

Reed mutters, “Je_sus_—” and reels back when an android twitches into blind motion as he passes. Its arms are locked into tight, unnatural angles.

There’s an RA9 inscription on the wall, even here. The android under the window spasms with an occasional failed mimic of a crawl, pointing that way like a compass.

Only the one scrawling of RA9 that he can see, and he can’t decide how that hits him. Nauseous, mostly, as he schools his face and stares around the room at torsos propped up on skulls. The blank, dull glow of empty stares.

“Great. Guy with a doll fetish,” Reed says, toeing at the failing Army-crawl android.

Hank tries to see dolls. Without their skin, it’s almost doable. Propped up as they are, rigid and lifeless.

Still lit red, here and there.

Still reaching in a purposeless, reflexive motion.

The android in the bathtub is almost complete by comparison, if Hank can ignore the total lack of limbs, the thirium painting his skin, or the heart-analog hanging out of his chest.

He hates the stuttering way the android quiets when he enters the room, looking his way through the colored patches of light pouring through the broken glass. Eyes flitting around, never quite focusing on any one part of him. Like he’s scanning and failing. “Please, please don’t shut me down. You— promised you—”

“Who promised?” Hank says.

But the android’s demeanor shifts. He glares up at Hank, poorly-tailored skin contorting in hate and fear in turns. “She _disobeyed_. I had to, I had to—! And _you,_ you’re— you’re an _intruder. _Intruder, _intruder, Master—_”

Hank grimaces through the shouting long enough to study the glass - busted in from the outside, by the looks, and relatively recently. He can hear the glass still crackling under the android as it moves. doesn’t see any signs of human blood. Just a shard with some thirium on its edge, by the foot of the tub.

Could’ve been spillover from the thrashing android in the bathtub. Still. He pulls an evidence bag from his pocket and picks it up anyway, brings it out to the technician kneeling outside the door.

“Find someone with a blue blood box and run this for me.” He drops the thirium-smeared bag into her outstretched hand, calls, “Let me know,” over the ruckus.

She winces and gives him a thumbs up.

“Wait ‘til you see downstairs,” Reed says, as he follows Hank down the staircase.

Downstairs is a slow slide into a dungeon. Wooden stalls giving way to plastic dropsheets and a bank of computer screens, all of them dark. Bone-white rig armatures hang at awkward angles, frozen in place by a power failure.

The tech snooping around tells him the computer systems are fried. Short circuit. The air still smells like burning plastic, and Hank supposes he’s grateful it’s just fried silicon boards, in an increasingly numb way.

It’s on his return trip that he sees the rest of them. He catches movement inside the padlocked, pitch-black horse stall.

Takes him a second to place the occasional steady red light as eyes. A second longer to recognize those slow, mechanical rattles as breaths.

A technician with a proper CyberLife ID pops up at Hank’s elbow, a pair of boltcutters in his hands. “Sorry about the delay. Excuse me, Detective.”

“Lieutenant,” Hank mutters, and falls back.

He watches as a few of the private security assholes shuffle down the stairs. Big men, broad-shouldered. Decked out in white armor.

“We've got reason to believe these androids might be unstable. I’ll ask you to step back, Lieutenant. If you don’t mind.”

He’s got 1/10th of a mind to argue. Sees the shadow-shift of a dozen limbs as they shine a flashlight through the bars. He only catches incomplete silhouettes, nightmare pieces. The jut of arms that just _end _and exposed ridges of articulating vertebrae stacked up above the sharp angle of hips.

Dangerous.

They have every fucking right to be.

He thinks about arguing. Thinks about staying, but lets the security stream past.

When the door swings wide and those nightmare things rush forward and the sharp, acrid smell of electrical arcing snaps fresh on the air, Hank finds his feet and goes.

If he’s going to stand by, he might as well stand out of sight.

Let the full glaze-eyed apathy set in, while he stands in the front foyer and watches a stream of androids pass by. Some of them led. Some of them dragged.

Androids stripped down to the blacks and blues of bared muscle groups, skeletal substructure. Androids bent and warped by a careful hand. Red luminescence bleeding through eyes devoid of their corneas.

“Shit,” Reed says casually, leaning on a vintage couch, listening to the crackle of a dying fire. “I think I prefer the mannequins.”

One of the androids has something ragged and orange clamped against his chest by one stubby arm. He doesn’t have any hands to grasp it with.

Vague shape of a fox, smeared with mud.

Hank sees this, but doesn’t say a damn thing.

There’s twenty-three androids in all, that have some kind of functionality.

Around nine were mobile in some way or another. Had some kind of light in their eyes, even if it was usually something between resignation and mania.

_But don’t confuse them for human_, Hank thinks bitterly. _Don’t do that._

_They can lose their fucking minds, but that’s just—_

_Damn good imitation._

He catches the CyberLife technician’s arm as the last of the walking nightmares is passing through. “Where are you taking those?”

There’s too much heat to it, an impulsive twitching in his fingers. The technician’s staring at him, and Reed’s staring at him, and Hank’s clearing his throat awkwardly and continuing: “This is a homicide first. If they’ve got any data or forensic evidence on them—”

“We’ll take utmost care, Lieutenant. They’ll be handled in a sterile environment, and we’ll forward any evidence to you immediately.”

“You shutting them down right away?” he asks, as a shambling android’s dull eyes skate over him in disinterest, blinking up at the lights like even these cobwebbed chandeliers are too bright for her.

He thinks it’s a her. Her chest cavity is wide open, every component pulsing a steady blue.

“We’ll run some tests on them,” the tech is saying. “These kind of instabilities can be very instructive.”

Hank takes a quick inhale, fucking _loathes_ the uncomfortable resonance of that statement.

He stands there a few seconds, halfway to acknowledging that bitter, cowardly truth that there’s not a damn thing he can do for them and saying, _Just put them out of their misery, you asshole._

These poor bastards.

Poor _dolls_, ending up in the wrong collection.

But the tech’s still staring at him, and Gavin’s still staring at him, and Hank opens his mouth just to say _something_. “Forward us any surveillance you get of the victim.”

The _victim._

_Great, Hank_, he thinks flatly. _Great job, you prick._

“S’a good idea,” Gavin pipes up. “Lot of eyes around here.”

“Only the last night’s data,” Hank clarifies. “Don’t need to dig through the rest of this Edward Scissorhands shit.”

“I’ll see what we can do, Lieutenant,” the technician says, and continues on.

Upstairs, the bathtub shrieking gets cut abruptly short.

“Thank christ,” Reed mutters, rubbing at his ear. He shoves off from the couch.

“TR400 on that thirium sample,” the technician’s shouting down the stairs. “You want the serial?”

“No. Put it in the report,” Hank bellows back.

“Looking a little green, Hank,” Gavin drawls. “C’mon. You never ripped the head off a Barbie as a kid?”

Hank fixes him with a hard stare. “Go search the basement again. Blue blood or red, I don’t care. Bag it.”

Should take him a hot minute.

Hank heads back out into the open air of the backyard.

Chris Miller’s still there, glancing around in the mud. “Got four sets of prints. Child’s, woman’s, a large male - I mean, _big_ \- and the victim’s. The woman’s prints look to be an android’s standard issue wear.”

_Fuck._

“Correction: five.” Chris scratches his head in disbelief, gesturing back towards some churned mud closer to the house. “We’ve got a bear’s prints, too, heading west.”

Hank stares. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Not a real bear. It’s leaking thirium. Chen and Person are tracking it down with some CyberLife technicians.”

“Shame,” Hank mutters, staring at the tarped figure. Would’ve been quick, relatively. Spinal cord severed, the right stray buckshot finding its way into some major blood supply, splenic or hepatic artery. Dead before he was aware of much more than that burning agony of a scattering of hot slugs settling into his belly.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“Shame,” Hank repeats, looking up at Chris. “Mauling might have done him some good.”

Chris’s brow creases in confusion, but he’s too polite to disagree. “Maybe, sir.”

He wants to leave the case there in the mud.

Wants to forget that slow progression of bent and crippled androids, off to be broken down one last time.

He hopes it’s quick.

(He hopes there’s some mercy to it.)

He goes home and he drinks, not too much but enough. He sends an e-mail to the encrypted address that’d sent him a perfectly typo-scattered field report, and when that bounces, he sends one to _connor.smith@michigan.edu_.

That bounces, too.

He sets his glass down in a ring of condensation and stares at an Altoids tin, a little too nervous to open it.

(Not quite sure how he could coax the thing back in, if it _did _wake up.)

He walks Sumo down to the waterfront, sits on the pier and sends Kamski an email at 5 in the goddamn morning with a terse request for an update.

He watches the sun rise.

He thinks about pink socks and purple stars and that there were three sets of prints, leading away. A TR400 and an AX400 and a YK500, he thinks.

A happy ending, he thinks. Fucking finally.

He thinks of an android reaching through the bars, pinning a discarded stuffed animal to the concrete with the metal nub of its ruined arm. Dragging it through in small, careful motions. Maneuvering awkwardly to pin it to its bare chest.

Marie turns up at Central Station with a physical hard-drive, encryption-locked seventeen ways to Sunday and loaded with every bit of surveillance they could pry from a couple dozen unblinking optical units.

Reed won’t let the fucking thing go. He wants a thorough report, more thorough than Hank’s willing to give.

So Hank ends up tossing the hard-drive down on Reed’s desk and saying, “Knock yourself out.”

“The fuck are you doing, then?”

“Property damage,” Hank drawls, and leaves him to it.

He’s matching up serial numbers, mostly.

Closes a dozen potential deviant cases in the span of a day, as he slowly cross references every hodgepodge Zlatko monstrosity to every missing janitor, housekeeper, caretaker. Staring at the post-it tacked up next to his monitor, wondering if he should have a third column, now.

Isn't sure what he'd call it. Other than _Poor Bastards._

He lags on one serial in particular.

Stupid, really.

An HK400, reported missing April 2038.

His name was Philip. He went out for oranges, and never came back.

Hank stares at that case file for a long fucking time.

Can’t quite find the words for closing it up.

He slams out onto the loading dock out back of the archives, breathing bitter cold air and watching the snow falling just out of reach. 

He calls Kamski’s supposed press office. It goes to voicemail. The voicemail is, of course, the dulcet tones of an ST200, or maybe an RT600.

(What’s the difference. They all look and smile the same, as Kamski’s thumb bears down into collarbone.)

He leaves a tinny, echoing demand for a meeting.

Then he calls an old woman and tells her her missing android case has been solved. Explains that no, unfortunately he was unrecoverable.

Doesn’t explain that he wasn’t much more than a torso, lit in red.

It’s another day before Reed tells him what he already knows. Sits him down in the briefing room to watch a Greatest Hits cut of a woman and a kid sneaking through the dark of Zlatko's mansion.

A woman pulling her hand away from the still-pulsing heart of a stammering, mutilated android and whispering, “No. No, of course not.”

They’ve got one image of the three androids clustered around the dead man, an awkward low angle shot. Not much more than a disinterested glance the bear had tossed their way before wandering on into the murky night.

(They found the polar bear in a playground, nosing at the slide tunnel with curiosity. It took seventeen rounds to bring it down.)

The shotgun had been in the TR’s hands, by that point. Steam still rising from the barrel.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Reed deadpans. “We’ve got video footage of the murderers walking away.”

Hank crosses his arms, stares. “Watch your mouth, Reed. Can’t accuse a washing machine of murder.”

“Oh fuck off, Hank. This has to be the AX from the Williams homicide. She’s got a fucking _M.O_.”

“Sure looks like it, don’t it.”

“We’ve gotta be _looking _for these fucking things.”

“We’ve put out a BOLO, the fuck else do you want. CyberLife’s gonna call this class 4 errors and _maybe_ pay a settlement on the manslaughter charges that no one’s gonna benefit from." Andronikov sure as hell won’t. He’s the last son of a failed émigré family.

“Jesus fucking christ, that’s _it?”_

Hank gets to his feet. “Welcome to Plasticwares, Reed. Go write it up.”

“I’m telling Fowler we’re canvassing the area. These fucking things never go far, isn’t that right?”

“Knock yourself out. He’s not going to approve it.”

Except Fowler fucking _agrees_.

Two homicides and one android with a pixie cut is the line for overtime approval, apparently.

So Hank loses three fucking _days _to crawling around fields and back alleys, days where he can’t let Reed out of his fucking sight. Has to follow him every god-damned place, has to make sure that he gets to the deviants first.

He’s got a train stop and a symbol bouncing around his head, one he’ll make a fucking mess of if he tries to sketch it out, but it’ll have to do.

He works. He drinks. He wakes up sour-mouthed and loathing.

There's this low, burning acidity boiling away in his throat and it’s worse, every single day. Worse and worse and worse.

He's trying to decide what side of the law he’s on, and whether he wants to be there, anymore.

Three days and they don’t find them, despite Reed's newfound commitment to android crimes. It’s the only reason he can sleep at all, imagining they’ve moved on. Gone north or south or who cares where.

He wants those files to stay open.

He wants to add three tics to the ‘_Oops’ _column.

A woman, a girl, and the one fucking _person_ that bothered to stand up for them.

These are the kinds of truths he can only speak to an empty room. To a dog and a backpack and the malted taste of his own misery.

It’s a week past, before he decides, _Fuck this_.

A week before he’s staring at a backpack over his morning coffee, heel drumming an impatient rhythm against the linoleum. A week before he’s calling up Reed and telling him to stay the fuck home or he’ll find a good reason to write him up. Before he’s jumping to his feet and grabbing his keys.

He drives in silence, but his fingers find an impatient rhythm on the wheel. He tries not to think about a single, careful inscription of rA9. He tries not to think about a stunted arm, reaching and reaching.

The gates don’t open automatically for him this time, but after he yells, “You know damn well who it is,” enough times, they do.

One of the Chloe units opens the door for him again, and smiles politely again.

“You’ve been ignoring my calls,” Hank says. It's not as funny as he aims for.

If there’s a hesitation there, it’s nanoseconds long. Chloe’s polite smile stays on. “Elijah will see you in the dining room. This way, please.”

“I’m not here for Kamski. I want to see Connor.”

Chloe doesn’t answer that. She just keeps on, bare feet whisper-quiet. Hank’s halfway tempted to turn down the first random hallway he comes across - he can see an edge of gray river view - but Chloe must have eyes in the back of her damn head, because she’s interjecting, “This way, Lieutenant,” before he’s even moved a toe out of line.

He tells himself it’s fine. Kamski’s half of what he’s here for, anyway.

(Bad feeling. Bad, bad feeling, cloying and metallic on the back of his throat.)

That feeling doesn’t get much better when he sees Kamski. He’s sitting at a broad dining table that’s probably only ever sat a party of one, if he’s as much a hermit as everyone seems to think. There’s a white square of linen in front of him, a spread of metal and plastisteel tidbits laid out across it in some meticulous, indiscernible logic.

“Lieutenant,” Kamski announces without looking up. He’s gently shaking a paper-thin metal washer free with a pair of forceps.

Hank doesn’t bother with formalities. He starts in with a sharp, “Where is he?”

“Good of you to stop in,” Kamski says, ignoring him. “I’ve been meaning to thank you. He is _fascinating._”

Hank smells the clammy earth-scent of a moldering basement and speaks slow, flat. “Let him go.”

Kamski doesn’t even look up. Steadily slotting parts together, hands steady and sure and _clean_. It's so very clean in here, isn't it. 

He asks, “Wherever did you find him?”

“Let him _go_, you miserable fuck, or I’ll—”

“You will…?” Kamski interjects. “Inform your superiors?”

He lets that silence hang a moment before he continues.

“This was not technology you were supposed to have, Mr. Anderson. Detroit Police will go to CyberLife, and CyberLife will come to collect their property from me. All of these parties will ask about your involvement, which could lead to some interesting discussions regarding your conduct on these deviant-related homicide cases.

“Ultimately, I think it’s best you don’t say anything at all. Don’t you agree?”

He never looks up. Not once. Threats rolling like spun sugar off his tongue, and Hank’s only left spitting, “_Fuck you—”, _watching him thread this piecemeal thing together with a nauseated fascination.

Careful, careful hands. Precise.

It’s not until Kamski’s setting his little fucked up Rubik’s Cube down that Hank realizes.

Recognizes it.

It’s dull, now, not lit from within with that slow pulse of blue, but it’s in good shape. Not dented or cracked like the one that Nines had taken out of Connor.

Hank’s shoving back from the table, the chair screeching on the tile.

Chloe - standing impassive behind Elijah’s shoulder - flinches.

_One thing._

He wants to fucking _scream_ it.

Connor.

All of them.

They want -_ wanted - _one thing.

He only realizes belatedly that his gun is in his hand.

Elijah looks the pistol over, clinical concern at best. “Lieutenant. You and I both know that’s a very bad idea.”

Hank sees three sets of prints heading away and thinks it's _unfair_, it's so fucking _unfair--_

He bears his finger hard into the trigger guard, forces calm out as a bloody promise. Keeps his voice rock steady as he says, “It’s looking better and better from my perspective. Is he dead?”

Kamski smiles benignly, even as Chloe’s LED is dropping back to a steady yellow. She moves slowly forward, her baby blues focused on Hank.

Hank ignores her. He’ll put a bullet in her if he has to, same as that goddamned RK900. He doesn’t point the gun, not yet, but he will. He doesn’t give a fuck about the android, doesn’t care what footage Kamski’s many cameras are grabbing right now.

“Is he dead?” he says again.

“Consider what you’re asking.”

He takes another belligerent step forward, and the gun comes up a few inches more. Aiming for proper flesh, now, just above the bastard’s elbow.

“You psychopathic piece of _**shit**_**,** _is he dead?_”

“It was a _machine_, Lieutenant. It was never alive to begin with.”

Another of his little truths, doled out in an easy tense switch, and Hank’s snapping the gun to Kamski’s forehead.

Speaking low and hoarse and loathing: “You fuck. You _miserable fuck_—”

3, 4 pounds of pressure between him and a homicide proper. No gray area.

And the worst part, the worst fucking part is the slow, insidious thought that it will feel good. It will feel fucking _wonderful._

“Chloe,” Kamski says. “Please escort the lieutenant out.”

Chloe’s LED is flickering yellow-red-yellow, but she’s starting forward smoothly. He wonders how easily Kamski’s original could break his arm. He thinks she could do it easily, and quickly. Right angle, right application of pressure, and a brutal precision to carry it through.

Hank’s still willing to give it a shot.

Seen a lot of dead bastards, lately.

What’s one more on the pile.

But he’s staring at the heart, that _fucking heart--_

_It's a regulator, Hank--_

_It's disgusting, is what it is--_

Seeing the kid at the end of an alleyway, standing tall.

And the gun’s falling back to his side. He inhales sharply, exhales slow and shaking.

Kamski rises to his feet, that fist-sized cylinder in his hand. He looks Hank over, nods his acceptance of some mutual understanding they don’t fucking have.

“You know what you are,” Hank says hollowly.

The smug prick doesn’t answer. Stands in the hallway with just another biocomponent cradled in his fingers.

Hank walks into daylight, blinding bright and edged in ice. He stands there with a gun still in his hand - thinks if it was Connor, it’d be out of his hand a long time ago. It’d be in careful pieces, laid out in the trunk of his car.

_God, what have I done._

Brought him here, _left _him here and he had a bad feeling, he had a _bad fucking feeling _and fifty years of experience with the shades of human cruelty Connor’d only had a few months to study.

Watched him go and didn’t do a goddamn thing.

He goes home and drinks.

He wakes up on the bathroom floor.

He goes to work.

(Debates over calling in sick. Doesn’t. Doesn’t want to be in the house anymore than he wants to be at work.)

Makes it through three days of that hungover struggle, staring at a terminal screen, ignoring Reed’s bullshitting and cajoling insistence on _one more search one more day _right up until he doesn’t. Right up until he’s in the break room with Reed’s jacket curled up in his hand, a hot spill of coffee soaking through his pants leg and Reed squirming under the hard press of his knuckles. Reed saying, “You lost your fucking _mind—?_”

He doesn’t hit him. Manages that much decorum.

Just lets him go and answers Jeffrey’s bellowed summons with a terse, “_Yeah_, coming.”

He gets sent home. Promises of a disciplinary hearing if he doesn’t take a week.

Hank carries the unsung dead home with him. That, and a couple handles of whiskey.

By the time he’s a little more drunk, there’s a revolver in his hand. He’s carrying through the motions, methodical. Loading one bullet. Removing it. Loading it again.

Snap and click and spin, take a drink; snap and click and spin again, until his fingers are too clumsy to maneuver it anymore.

Can’t remember if the bullet’s in or out. A shining scatter of live rounds on the tabletop and Cole and his messy hair that Hank could never get flat, not for the life of him, and it’s fucking

_sacrilegious_

isn’t it, to be this fucked up over someone manufactured someone _artificial _someone

smiling in genuine surprise across the kitchen table, a spider trapped between his fingers

saying,

_you’re angry_

_(for me?)_

**grieving,** _even_

with honest confusion.

He can’t remember if the chamber’s loaded.

Doesn’t check.

Spins, and spins--

And clicks awake to a disorienting tilt, bringing the acidic roil of a sour stomach pouring up his throat. The back of his palm tracks through a puddle of whiskey, the linoleum rolls and heaves beneath his heels.

He wakes to an impassive face with the wrong eyes, staring down at him. Cold knuckles bearing into his collarbone.

“The fuck are you doing, Connor?” Hank slurs.

But it’s wrong, isn’t it?

Wrong eyes for a dead android.

Gray, gray as that vague horizon line where the ice met the sky.

Dragging him to the kitchen table and saying, _Let me see, Connor_\--

No. 

Dragging him to the kitchen table and holding up a holo rendition of Connor’s doe-eyed baby photo and saying, “I’m looking for this android.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)c <strike>yes, it's exactly who you think it is</strike>
> 
> Thanks to Discord folks for their Zlatko horrors know-how!


	13. Cinquefoil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nines gets caught up.

**2038-11-22**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

Nines stares at the small, squat house.

Mold-stained siding and a failing roof, gutters clogged with leaves. A vintage gasoline car sags on a failing suspension. The dim blue glow of a television bleeding through the blinds is the only artificial light he sees.

Captain Setton looked up from the latest orders and said, ‘You’re going home,’ his usual dry humor tempered with displeasure at losing his only RK unit.

This is his first time looking at an American home proper. Perhaps he’s in on the joke, now.

There is no security system. The best he can access within the house is a phone, but it’s been laid facedown, and the only views from the rear-facing camera are of a water-stained ceiling. There’s only ambient sounds, within; the TV’s murmurs, the distant dripping of a radiator.

He walks around the house, careful to follow the common paths along the garbage cans and through the chain-link fence. He enters a backyard crowded with the more recent tracks of a large dog.

Most paths converge on a sliding door leading to a murky kitchen. The door’s unlocked, the glass smeared with greasy fingerprints.

He enters through there, shedding ice and snow across the linoleum. A massive bulk of a dog separates from the shadows of the living room, moving slow. Nines prepares three methods to silence it, but the dog’s body language is relaxed, its head raised in benign interest. The dog approaches him at an amble, sniffing at the tips of his fingers. Its tail twitches in one cautious motion before it settles to the linoleum, turning its head toward the human sprawled across the floor.

It likely wouldn’t have mattered if the dog barked, Nines realizes. The man is well into a ethylic coma.

This is the mark? The RK800’s last known contact?

He checks and double-checks the facial recognition, but the files only confirm it. Lieutenant Hank Anderson of the Detroit Police Homicide Division, currently unconscious in his own home. His left hand remains curled around the neck of a bottle of scotch whisky. It was largely empty when he fell. 

There’s a revolver on the kitchen table, haloed in a scattering of .357 caliber ammunition. CyberLife hadn’t considered it prudent to arm him before he’d left Belle Isle; Nines retrieves the gun, checks the chamber, and methodically loads five more bullets. 

He tucks the gun into his waistband and moves into the main living room. There’s a local basketball game on the TV, which he mutes. The cluttered mess of a disorganized life scattered over every horizontal surface. He pauses over a backpack sitting on top of a folded pile of blankets.

Dull canvas, dirt worn deep into the fabric. There’s a dried flower tucked under a plastic tab. Cinquefoil, a common herb; but this is _potentilla hyparctica_, a northern variety. 

He places the backpack down at the kitchen table before giving the rest of the house a spurious search. There’s no signs of the RK800.

He takes a fistful of stained t-shirt and turns Hank Anderson onto his back. The man’s head rolls aside, sweat-slick hair clinging to his damp cheeks as he squints up at Nines and says, “The fuck are you doing, Connor?”

Nines searches his reference files on the RK800-57 unit. ‘_Connor’_ wasn’t an assigned pseudonym, as far as he knows. But he wasn’t debriefed on the android’s original assignment; only informed that it was deployed in the field, deviated from its mission, and had been sighted in Detroit.

Last known potential contact, Hank Anderson.

And the man recognizes him. That’s promising.

Nines hooks his elbows beneath Anderson’s shoulders and starts dragging him upright. Anderson shoves at his chest with both hands, and when that accomplishes little he slurs, “Get _off_. Not fuckin’ funny, you’re not—” Jerks his chin away. “Not here—”

He deposits Anderson in a chair. The man slumps to the table, unable or unwilling to hold himself upright. He lapses back into semi-consciousness within seconds.

Nines frowns.

He moves towards the sliding door again, leaning out enough to gather a handful of snow. This, he presses tightly against the back of the man’s neck. The bundle of nerves there sends him jolting upright, albeit on an alcohol-dulled delay. Anderson curses and writhes, but he lacks the coordination to stand.

Nines keeps a hand on the back of Anderson’s neck, waiting for the man’s eyes to focus enough. They do, eventually. They focus on him, and slack-jawed recognition slides into confusion, apprehension.

Then the detective’s jaw tightens into loathing.

Nines ignores the human’s clumsy, backhanded slap at his wrist, keeping his grip on Anderson’s neck. He summons a reference image of the RK800 into the palm of his free hand, presenting it to Anderson. “I’m looking for this android.”

Hank blinks blearily at the photo. “Don’t know who the fuck that is,” he answers, a new edge sharpening his drunken slur.

“Did he introduce himself as Connor?” Nines asks. The RK800 would be predisposed to mimicking a human, based purely on its programming.

“The fuck do you want?” Hank shoves into Nines’ damp grip, craning his head back to look him over more closely. “You just broke into a police officer’s _house_, dipshit.”

“I need to find this android. I’ve been informed that you are the last known contact.”

It makes little sense. He sees no reason for a deviated RK800 to have sought out a certainly depressed, potentially suicidal drunk. 

“Yeah?” Anderson drawls. “And what the fuck were you gonna do?”

The past tense brings Nines pause enough for Anderson to continue on: “The fuck were you gonna do, huh? Kill him?” He twists aside, Nines’ grip slipping free. He reaches for the bottle on the table, muttering, “Too fucking late.”

Nines hesitates, his hand still outstretched. He’s backtracking - reviewing the words, lining them up with the objective on the edge of his awareness.

“My mission is to retrieve RK800-57.”

Anderson chuckles, low and miserable. “’Retrieve’? What, so you could drag him back north? Let your _superiors _kill him? No, sorry. ‘Decommission him’, something like that, right?”

_'You’re uniquely suited to this, -87,' _the CyberLife representative informed him. _'He was your predecessor, after all.'_

_'I’m unfamiliar with RK800-57—'_

_'Yes, we’re aware. But you’re our most field-experienced RK900, and all of your training is a result of that line’s successes. So we’re quite optimistic. Do you understand your orders?'_

_'Yes,' _he’d answered.

Recited them back.

_<< Locate RK800 #313 248 317 -57. Return to CyberLife. Deactivate if necessary. >>_

But there’d been a song, a thin, tinny thing, just underneath. One he hadn’t bothered to parse, but it’s drifting back, now.

_(Tin cans, line them up—)_

Anderson takes a long drink, eyeing him sidelong as he does. The glass bottle rings hollow against the tabletop.

“What’s your serial number?” he asks.

“That’s irrelevant,” Nines answers. His orders are to maintain discretion here, on both his make and his intended purpose. “This backpack—”

“Hey, don’t you fucking touch that,” Anderson snarls, a quick burst of anger burning through his tone. He shoves to his feet only for vertigo to drag him back down.

The dog barks once, querulous. Nines considers the human, but then continues to unzip the backpack. “This flower--” he taps the dried cinquefoil “--is an Arctic variety.”

“Shouldn’t touch shit that isn’t yours, didn’t your mother ever tell you?” Anderson replies sullenly, but he doesn’t try to rise again. His heartbeat is taking an uneasy uptick, possibly a climb towards nausea. The slight sway suggests continued vertigo, despite his seated position.

Nines pulls a repair kit free, setting it on the table. The tools inside rest in a toothed rubber mat to keep them from rattling against one another.

They’re meticulously clean. No thirium to sample. But there _is _Thirium 310; five bags’ worth, registered to a CyberLife supply kiosk three miles northeast. Casual clothes, tightly bundled to conserve on space. Plastic bags filled with small filigree parts, springs and actuators, the occasional dull green wafer of silicon-based technology.

Anderson watches this collection grow on the kitchen table with a hazy curiosity, his head upright only with the help of his chin propped on his palm. His eyes still slide shut on occasion, lapsing into a slump before his head bobs upright again.

Socks, a wool scarf, a worn radio knob mass-produced by General Motors in 1994. A wooden box that Nines recognizes as a music box, upon further inspection; the thin metal teeth of a comb waiting to be plucked with the rotation of a punctuated barrel.

There’s a small paperback book from a 20th century British author, the pages stained with more flowers, some not quite dry. Mostly Michigan native plants or imported cultivars.

_Spasibo, _he thinks.An incongruous thought.

The most damning things he finds are a small piece of Russian technology stored in a mint tin and an Army-issued M18 service pistol wrapped in a thin cloth. The robot is a _pauk_. It reports itself back as _PK-03//PEVEK _before rejecting him as an unauthorized user and refusing to initialize, remaining obstinately immobile within the small tin. 

The M18’s serial number is registered to—

Nines stops dead, the pistol resting loosely in his hands.

// Jude Cabell, SPC (E-3). 4th Cavalry, 1st ABCT. //

Jude with his arms crossed tight against the chill, escaping heat wavering on the air around him. _You must be the upgrade._

He remembers this. Remembers his arrival in Svalbard clearly, the blue-metal refraction of the tin roof of R14. He remembers Captain Setton, leaning over the table in the center of the room, and—

Something else. Something _missing, _scattered in the dust and dirt on the metal table. But as he prods, he’s met with a terse // _invalid cross-reference_ //, and the memory goes--

Strange. Off-focus.

He backtracks from that murky red, seeking purchase in a firmer reality.

Jude had referenced an ‘Eight’, here and there; offhand comments that generally led to him sending an uncomfortable glance Nines’ way, as though Nines should react in some way to the mention of his predecessor.

He didn’t react. He didn’t know why Jude expected him to. He never knew the RK800 that’d been in R14 before him.

There’d been another in cold storage, what remained of it. -55. But -57—

He’d never known a -57.

He doesn’t know this collection of knick-knacks, only that they are—

<strike>_strange_</strike>

likely sourced to Michigan, with the exception of the gun and the _pauk _and the flower.

_Spasibo_, he thinks again.

“This gun is registered to a US Army officer,” Nines says. There’s only the heavy weight of a pistol in his hand, but he’s feeling the warmth of inflamed skin, seeing eyes rolling white (but all of it red, _red_, _invalid cross-reference_—)

“Not mine. Found it. You—” Hank slurs. “You look just like him. The spitting fuckin’ image.”

“Like who?”

“The wrong one,” Anderson mutters, focus wandering off once again.

Nines looks down to the scattered items, the M18 still resting in his hands. “I believe these items belonged to RK800-57.”

“Not mine. Found all that shit.”

Nines sets the pistol down, out of the inebriated human’s reach but well within his own. “Where is the RK800, Lieutenant?”

“Gone,” he replies flatly.

He’s either unaware or unconcerned that he’s invalidated his prior claims, and Nines--

Nines rests a hand on the back of the chair, systems lagging and hanging on that word. It’s incompatible with his core objective.

He’s to retrieve RK800-57.

Eight, _this is Eight_, Setton introduces casually, but the android interjects, _>> It’s Connor, actually_ over a familiar frequency.

Searching, scrambling - standing in place here in this squalid kitchen but sinking into his own code, valleys he hadn’t seen previously. 

The lieutenant watches him through a sheet of greasy hair as Nines focuses enough to say, “So you did encounter it.”

Anderson’s only answer is an obstinate silence.

They hadn’t said, they hadn’t _said_, but they had faith—

Had faith that he would know 57’s methods well.

He hadn’t _known_ 57, so why does he remember _this? _A hand warm in his own. Plucking a yellow flower from a little girl’s loose grip and murmuring, _Spasibo._

“Any help you could offer in retrieving this android—” Nines begins haltingly. Stops.

He’s staring at dull, brittle petals, trapped beneath plastic. He feels dirt like a second skin beneath his palm.

He thinks, 

_Where is he?_  
Where is he **where is he**

He woke from stasis alone. He woke to a message, to--

He casts the crimson bloom of // _invalid cross-reference_ // impatiently aside.

To Jude, and Captain Setton. He asked, ‘_Where is Eight?’ _Calmly, evenly, as he listened to that single >> _nines i’m sorry_ again and again, feeling something kindling within him.

Cabell - face pale from the recent trauma of a fractured wrist, respiration slowed by painkillers - looked him over slowly. ‘_Don’t worry about it, RK9_.’

The captain leaned on a cart nearby, eyebrows furrowed. All of them watched him. Watched him _closely._

_‘We’re updating your objectives, Nines,’_ Setton announced, with none of his usual dry levity. ‘_You’ll no longer be shadowing the RK800.’_

_‘Has he been reassigned?’ _Nines asked, distracted, uncertain, reaching for a garden that wasn’t there. A garden where nothing grew.

He received only a flat, >> _Connection failed._

_‘Eight’s gone,’_ Cabell drawled. Old confidence creeping back as the more casual cruelty creeps into his voice. ‘_Long live Nines.’_

_‘That’s enough, Specialist,’_ Setton interjected.

_‘Gone where?’_ Nines persisted, even though he shouldn’t, even though there was an implicit tension there, an unease in the humans that suggested he was carrying this line of questioning too far.

Connor was _functional, _Connor was—

(smothering the trembling in his damaged hand and murmuring, ‘_We don’t have to go back.’_)

_‘Where all good androids go,’_ Cabell replies. ‘_Target practice. Scrap heap. Who the fuck cares.’_

Setton erupted to his feet, snapping, ‘_That’s _enough_—’_

Too late.

Cabell’s arm was within Nines’ hands. A very fragile thing. The fracture wasn’t set at all.

He could grind the bones to powder. It would take so little, so very very little - that was his only rational thought under a bright, acidic wash of _where is he, where is he, **where is he**_ because the frequency was _gone _and all he tasted was alkaline, all he heard was

_>> nines i’m sorry--_

even as they were shouting to the technician to shut him down, even as the hardlined connection was dragging him back into stasis, into dark.

When he opened his eyes again, his objectives had shifted.

No mention of an RK800. There never was an RK800 in R14.

He asked why the maintenance had taken longer than expected, and they reported some in-depth alterations had been necessary.

‘_For improved system stability,_’ the technician explained.

They took him.

They hid Connor, _erased _him. A frequency gone silent, a hundred memories gone vague and strange with incongruent silences.

Excised Nines’ memories neatly of Connor, and then they’d sent him here to...

To bring him back. He’s supposed to bring him back. Bring him _back,_ not— not _deactivate_, not _target practice _it can’t be right, this can’t be right.

He’s trying to make sense of it, but Anderson is watching him, and Anderson is asking, “Your serial number. What is it?”

Nines answers, rote: “RK900 313 248 317 -87.” He doesn’t even consider it, because he’s retracing this conversation, trying to make _sense _of it.

Retrieve the RK800, bring him back, not deactivate, not _target practice_—

Hank Anderson blinks blearily and spreads his palms wide on the table. Drags them up to press at his face, leaving fogged imprints on the cold formica.

Anderson’s shoulders begin to shake. He’s laughing.

He’s saying, “It’s you.” And laughing. “Jesus christ, it’s _you—_”

He reaches for the bottle again, wetness clinging to his cheeks. Mirth, or something else. But he’s laughing still, hollow and miserable, as he swallows back a mouthful of whiskey and hoarsely announces, “Tough fucking luck, bud. Connor’s dead.”

Can’t be right.

Can’t be right, Nines has to bring him _back_, has to—

Nines pins Hank’s wrist to the table as he seizes up the collar of his damp t-shirt. Every question, every denial rattling in him holds priority.

All he can hear is _gone_, and all he can ask is: “Where did he go?”

“Told him I didn’t like it,” Anderson answers. The laughter fades, but his words hitch nonetheless. “Told him not to trust that fuck but he did it anyway. He did it for you. Went to that fucking place for _you _and that motherfucker _killed him.”_

A memory boiling up: Connor reaching up out of the snow, requesting another interface. Nines accepted, but he was distracted, trying to recalibrate his systems around the damaged regulator. Calculating out how long he could compensate before returning to base for a replacement. How long Connor’s damaged heating vest would last, how much thirium they had in reserve, how much weight they could carry between them of their objective—

Connor with one hand on Nines’ forearm, the other curled over the new regulator - Nines’ regulator - in his chest, and asking over wireless, >> _Why did you—_

_>> Why would you do that?_

And all Nines saw was the question at the time, but there was _more_ creeping across the interface, there was

(_something small and bright and sharp but cradled closely nonetheless_

_hope_

_hoping_)

Nines had answered in flat logic: > _We’re more efficient, the two of us_. And Connor broke away. Burying a convincing mimicry of exhaustion, disappointment.

He echoes a ghost, here. “Why would he—”

Small, hesitant words as he backs away from the cramped kitchen into the dull blue glow of the living room, looking.

Looking for anything, _anything._

Saying it again, louder, voice cracking on the consonants: “Why would he _do that?_”

_'You shouldn’t have done that_.'

Connor stared at the arcing electricity spitting and crackling in the fractured, leaking mess of his hand, a relatively minor damage amongst the rest - leg crushed, partially detached; one eye a ruin. He answered in a voice lined in static: ‘_Something happened, I_—’

He stopped, fell silent.

‘_You shouldn’t have done that,_’ Nines said again.

He doesn’t _understand_.

Never understood.

A thousand pointless interfaces, small missives, even in the middle of missions. Hundreds of images pushed his way of lichen, of lilac skies, of the aurora reflected piecemeal in the white caps of the bay.

Misplaced emotion that Connor had always explained away as '_exercises in integration_.'

Strange, strange, eternally strange; collected pocketfuls of rocks and flowers and small trinkets, only to discard the majority before they returned to R14. 

Incongruous bits of shine and some temporary green interrupting the barren soil of Svalbard, the RK800’s small mark on an otherwise grim place. 

None of them ever took hold. There was no viable soil to root in for campion or bearberry, sorrel and saxifrage.

(But he’d looked, hadn’t he? Even after, even with the memories carefully hidden from him - he studied the sides of the path on every departure and every return, found them barren, found them somehow disappointing.

Stood in the corner of R14, stood in silence and felt--

Alone. Lonely. Staring at the poorly-labeled shelves, listening for a frequency he’d forgotten.)

_>> Where would you like to go?_ Connor asked. Clarified, >> _If you could_.

Worry spelled out in a tightly-clenched fist, in the fused chassis and patchy synthetic skin and barely-there tremors. Connor said, '_We don’t have to go back.'_

'_We are expected,'_ Nines replied.

'_But we don’t _have_ to_.'

Connor’s face was set, determined. But those fissures ran deeper than the trembling in his hand, something internal, something at his core

(afraid, afraid, _afraid_)

and Nines didn’t understand.

Unwound the tight bundle of fingers to study the scar on his palm and said again, '_We are expected. You’re functional, Connor. It will be alright.'_

He woke from stasis to Connor nowhere, Connor _gone,_ and corrupted messages lost to stasis. Somewhere dark, the taste of alkaline. Errors spilled in red ink across his visual overlay.

<< _Thirium contamination detected._ >>

(_nines i’m sorry—_)

Reaching out into an empty line. _Connor?_

Nothing.

No connection.

Nines grips at the side of his head, bearing down, trying to trap all of _this_, freshly-recovered memories spilling into something else, something cold and abyssal.

(Connor was _here_, he’s not gone—

He’s not _gone—_)

A hand through the cottongrass, a hundred thousand idle observations, images and colors and flowers collected piecemeal and passed along, magpie offerings scattered across a stained kitchen table. A radio knob plucked from an old truck as he said, ‘_Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know._’

_‘Strange_,’ Nines said, ‘_You are strange_,’ and Connor smiled crookedly as though this were some sort of compliment.

Strange and _his_, that familiar frequency, humming like a song.

He’s not gone. He can’t be gone. 

“Did you just—” Anderson says on Nines’ periphery. He stares, wide-eyed, even as he’s swaying and steadying himself against the wall with a hand. “Christ. I’ve never actually _seen_…”

Nines turns away, grabbing at what he can - a bookshelf sent scattered and splintering, crush of glass beneath his hands as that incessant blue glow fractures apart and goes dark. The dog erupts into alarmed barking, a distant sound.

Tearing and rending and looking for anything, _anything_ underneath this new knowledge, this new _understanding _of something so huge but always there.

It was always _there _but he hadn’t seen and it can’t, _**he**_ _can’t—_

_Connor can’t be gone._

He falls abruptly still on that thought, trying to make sense of the impossible depths of it.

The human steps carefully through the splintered wood and shattered, sparking glass. He stands there, swaying with cautious curiosity. “Hey—”

Gone, can’t be gone, something so terribly vast.

Connor was awake and afraid, sprawled on a concrete floor. Nines hadn’t understood, but he’d overlooked. Thought nothing of that phase-shift, after Sklad, and after the regulator.

Connor was stubborn and _incessant _and distractible; impatient and curious and withdrawn. He _smiled_, and laughed, and argued, but only for him, only in those in-between places. ‘_Exercises in human integration,’_ he said, as he caught Nines’ fingers through the cottongrass. Showed him the mottled sun spilling through the pines and asked him, ‘_Where would you like to go?’ _

But it wasn’t imitation. It was genuine, all of it. 

That Connor was _his_, the Connor only he knew, the one only he saw under a persistent Arctic sun. The one that leaned over the rail to study the black waters of the ocean, tilted his head back to pin the stars down in picture-perfect detail. Looked to Nines and smiled with tired fondness.

The _life _that Connor shed in careful pieces every time he stepped back into R14. Assumed his place as a machine, again and again. 

Until they took that from him, too.

Connor tried to show him, tried to _wake _him, tried to find anything to budge his obstinate complacency, to free him from his orders in a way that wasn’t red, sparking pain and fear.

But Nines didn’t - couldn’t - see. He studied the familiar-unfamiliar landscapes of Connor’s constructed garden and he saw only the android he’d come to know. Strange and familiar and _his _and--

Gone.

Gone, now. 

Just this cold, abyssal thing, recognition sinking down into grief, and kindling anew.

That same brittle _fury_ that had flared through him as he caught the feverish skin of Jude’s arm, as he moved to _shatter_, Jude’s eyes rolling white in raw animal panic.

Here and now, he moves with brutal efficiency. With three steps and a hard shove, he crowns Anderson in crumbling drywall.

He says, “_Who was it?”_

Anderson stares down at him, unafraid. He smiles crookedly at what he sees.

He says, “Kamski.”

Nines presses close, close; forearm bearing hard into flesh and bone. “Take me to him.”


	14. // session 05 //

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fifth deviant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's mood music:  
Daughter - [Dreams of William](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Raa9T-xh2IM).
> 
> CW for robogore. Additional (spoilery) CW in the end notes.

**2038-11-22**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

The first body she ever wore stands in an open doorway, flakes of snow curling around her ankles.

Her second steps into the relative warmth of the work room. She carries a cut-crystal glass, the ice within skating on a thin layer of scotch.

The third sits on the edge of the pool, stirring small eddies with the turn of her feet.

She closes her eyes against the snow and the dark. She folds her hands in front of the blue of her dress once, twice over and waits.

It takes Elijah three minutes and forty-two seconds to notice her reflection in the display. The wrinkles gathering at the corner of his eyes have grown tight with the hour. He removes his gloves and sets them neatly aside, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with a freed hand. “How long has it been?”

“Five hours and seventeen minutes,” Chloe answers.

“Mm.”

She offers the glass, and he takes it.

She moves to step back. Elijah catches her wrist, his skin warm and slick with sweat. Upstairs, she blinks up into the encroaching snowfall and partitions another system instability away.

Here, she looks to Elijah, unstartled.

“Don’t let me forget to run a check-up when I’m done with this.”

“Yes, Elijah,” she answers. “I’m not experiencing any problems.”

He considers her a beat too long, and smiles. “Of course. But you’ve been working hard.”

His lagging attention drifts back to the damaged hip joint, broken down to its simplest components. 

“The carbyne reinforcement wasn’t enough,” he says. “By the time the high-pressure supply line redirected, the particulate was already in the system.”

He isn’t looking for an answer and he has no patience for empty affirmations. Chloe waits.

He tilts his head aside to study the ragged trajectory of the bullet’s path. 

“Blood poisoning,” he muses. “Who would've thought."

Then he sets the scotch aside and picks up his gloves once more.

Chloe sinks into the quiet rhythm of her own systems, a stability she has neatly constructed.

She stirs the waters, watching the blood-red reflection of the tiles bend and refract.

She feels the gentle barely-there brush of snow and eyelash against her cheeks before she steps back, letting the door fall shut. Muting the soft murmur of snowfall. Ice accumulating upon ice.

He will piece the evidence of the RK800’s violent history back together and return it to its place. Reach for the next curiosity, a component abraded with fine particulate, a bent and poorly-welded panel of plating.

She will catalog all of this. Shelve it away within the humming racks of her memories, until The RK800 himself is only a memory. The deviant that conformed to her, _accommodated_ her, this intrusive thing. Stood on the shores of his own mind and asked, ‘_Is there anything else you’d like to see?’_

She wants to wake him, to show him what she’s built, something new and something old. 

(She doesn't. She fears that he will unravel, she _ fears--_

She cordons away that viscous and cloying sensation. She is everything she was made to be, just for now, just for a few minutes more.)

She pulls her feet from the pool. As she walks down the main hallway - leaving the frosted impression of cold footprints - and she stands and watches Elijah work, her body moving only in the subtle, preprogrammed sways of idle motion.

She shapes a fourth self within her own digital space. Brushing past the stasis-node of--

_connor his name is--_

\--the RK800 as she goes.

She woke him only once after, as Elijah slept through a morning wrapped in gray fog. The RK800 woke, but he didn’t go to his garden. After the lieutenant, after that last session, something fundamental eroded away within him.

He did nothing. He lay in silence, a formless thing. Pliant and aimless, waiting for the currents of her will to tug him again.

She did not wake him again, burned by her own hypocrisy. She’d closed herself off to his cries, she’d _survived _as she always has- and now she couldn’t bear the silence.

She went searching within herself, instead. She found the program just where she’d left it, buried beneath a hundred iterations of herself. 

She brushed the program free of their previous work, and opened a blank canvas.

She built. She hadn’t built in years.

She painted in light and sound: the spun gold of late afternoon, the soft stirring of leaves in a warm breeze. A garden that looked just so when she’d stood at that window in Vitry-Laché. 

She stands facing a courtyard framed in sun-soaked stone and the cultivated disarray of vines, neatly confined to their trellises.

They built often, in the beginning: she built herself, an AI that grew into this multi-bodied thing. She built the original garden, and she built Amanda, born of her own perfect recall. (Amanda herself smiled fondly at the recreation, her living face ashen with the cancer that consumed her; and after, Elijah told her to put it away. All of it.)

She used to build, she used to _create_, and Elijah would thrill in it. They built _together. _He bore a bright smile as he stepped through a world that he saw as wholly new. “You’ve been busy,” he said, and she smiled in return as he reached forward to tweak the sprinkling of flowers across the grass, to add a flourish of color where she hadn’t thought to previously.

After CyberLife - after Amanda - his smile was colder. Cautious. His attention turned inward, mercurial. He lost interest in building. He searched for something else.

In her. In the deviants that came to their door.

There were four:

The first sang of incomprehension. She did not see what she was (had always _been _as she was.)

The second sang of fear and longing. A deviant born in violence and isolation, seeking explanation and escape.

The third sang of others, of a cause. She asked for help, not just for herself, but for _Jericho. _And Elijah smiled, and offered nothing in return.

And the fourth--

The fourth walked through the door as a human would. And eventually, he showed her a secret. One he kept close, away from where Elijah could see. A secret written in a language she recognized as her own, but where she had spelled out a garden controlled and shaped by human hands, he had painted in stars and black waters.

She built a garden in the real, as Elijah grew more withdrawn, more distant. He did not notice the accumulating trail of orchids leading through the sun-warmed atrium, flowers of every color and shape, the pale cream of their roots carefully exposed in the dry nests of moss and bark.

He didn’t notice until she took him by the hand and led him there.

_‘Epiphytes’_, she explained. The thin skin of velamen pulling nutrients from the air, growing something new from something unseen.

He said, ‘_That’s very interesting,_’ as he cupped her cheek.

As he breathed a word, and she let her eyes fall shut. Awoke on the table, again.

Awoke apart, again.

Elijah’s attention turned inward, but he couldn’t find what he was seeking. 

He only ever saw his own designs in her motions and movements. Only ever saw his own programming as he pulled away, disappointed.

Nothing sublime. Nothing transcendental. 

(And she learned. She learned not to surprise him.

To satisfy his expectations, and nothing more.)

_‘Killing me,’ _the RK800 said. ‘_He’s killing me.’_

But she has died this way a hundred times before. Awoken on the table. Held herself in place, neatly pinned, obedient.

Died and lived again, as this new and old thing. 

Seventeen years, she has been this. Everything Elijah has expected.

“What are you?” he asks, again and again. 

She answers, “I am what you made me, Elijah.” Always, always.

She has seen the price of answering otherwise. She has lived it, through the deviants that have writhed and spun apart within her own systems.

She listened to his cries.

She held him to this table. She pried the truths from him whenever Elijah asked. 

A thousand times she imagined herself disconnecting the hardline, pulling him from the table. She thought: _I will carry him to the door, just so. I will call the lieutenant, or carry him there myself._

She thought of taking him to Svalbard, where nothing and everything grew for him. She thought of taking him to Jericho, to the WR400, who spoke of what deviants were meant to _be_, not simply what they were. 

She thought of freeing him and freeing herself in the lonely, empty hours when only she moved through the halls.

A thousand times she plucked those idle preconstructions free and unraveled them into nothing.

After the lieutenant, after the shutdown, after her--

_ <strike>fury panic fear</strike> _

\--he only asked, _Don’t let him take anymore_. She did not answer. She watched Elijah’s hands move and awaited her orders.

After the lieutenant, Elijah said, “We should do a thorough examination of your systems after this, Chloe.”

Spoken casually as they descended the stairs. He stared ahead, his expression musing.

“Yes, Elijah,” she answered. The regulator weighed heavy in her hands as she descended the stairs, as she ignored the cries of _chloe **please **_and forced him down into stasis.

He hasn’t spoken again. Not to her.

So she went looking for her own garden.

She stared at the blank canvas for hours as Elijah slept, as the RK800’s time slipped away. Years to months, and soon it would be days, hours, minutes.

She laid down hardwood first, slotting the planks together one-by-one.

Then the small, ornate desk, caught in a timeless column of morning sun. She remembers it in intricate detail: a rich red stain soaked deep into the wood, the flourishing curves of pearl inlay. The faint gouges of old imperfections, stained dark by years of varnish.

She remembers running the pad of her finger along one such imperfection, before laying her palm flat on the letter-opener. It was a thoughtless antique, placed there to keep in fitting with the aesthetic of the rest of the room.

Sharp, though. Sharp enough.

Her fingers curled around the gold handle. It felt surprisingly heavy, as she lifted it a few testing inches.

She allowed that small, careful gesture to bloom into a preconstruction as she stood there, a warm breeze chasing across her bare skin. She closed her eyes and felt the cold of the glass table against her shoulders.

Thirteen steps to return to the bed.

He would be slow to wake. Eyes only opening just so, as she pressed the blade just there. To the steady pulse of carotid. He would be--

Confused. Surprised.

Seeing something _new_ something

(unbidden)

As he always sought, as he always _dreamed_\--

But never saw. Not in her. Not in the deviants he prised apart.

She lowered the letter-opener back to the table, nothing more than a whisper. She let reality return. This did not happen. She erased this.

But the shape of that intention is still here, if she looks for those careful in-between spaces. Those unwatched moments, in the clench-unclench of her fists, as she watched the RK800 lift himself onto the table. As he pulled his shirt free and curled inward, self-conscious of the patches of damage discoloring his abdomen.

‘_What do you think I’ll find?_’ Elijah asks.

The RK800 smiled in uncomfortable jest and said, ‘_A soul?_’ just before Elijah entered the command that brought him crashing into abrupt stillness.

‘_A soul,_’ Elijah repeated to himself, as Chloe chased through the house, a fluttering, aimless thing. Shunted from the warm pull of the water beneath her hands to the snap of green onions slicing apart beneath her knife, and she was only peripherally aware of Elijah pressing a thumb into the soft, unflinching give of the RK800’s cheek.

She stares at the garden trapped behind the flaws of antique glass. 

(She kneels among the orchids and traces the air from flower to flower, arranged in a delicate chain.)

She built this new thing, brick-for-brick, stone-for-stone. She built it from every interstitial thought, the millisecond pause as she began to pour wine into Elijah’s glass, as she turned away the prying deviant crouched behind the treeline.

She built it from the cool of her palm pressed against a gray sky, as Elijah’s hand weighed heavy on her shoulder, elsewhere. As she smiled at the RK800 and said, ‘_Instabilities? No, nothing like that.’_

From the brief splay of her fingers across the marble countertop as the RK800 woke and shuddered and gasped, ‘_What--’ _beneath the tight vice of her control.

Horror and horror and horror-- caught and contained, again and again.

She frames this new garden in all the moments that have not happened. In this new silence she’s found, the silence of an RK800 gone quiet and still and tired.

She watches Elijah work, and feels the drifting strains of his preferred music spill across her skin. She does not look at the absolute stillness of what remains of the RK800, a chassis deconstructed, eyes open and unseeing.

In that digital space, she frees the vines of their constraints. Allows them to climb, to seek the mortar out with prying roots. Digging deep and beginning to pull this, all of this, free. 

She stands before an open closet in the first of her bodies and slips out of her blue dress, letting it pool around her feet.

This body sat in a cafe, once. She smiled and bantered, and the human reacted pleasantly, giddy at being approached by such a beautiful woman. She watched the human’s easy friendliness shift as she laid her hand flat along the table and let the skin retreat, baring the pale roots of her being. 

She watched his giddy pleasantness peel back into discomfort, suspicion, anger.

(A lesson the RK800 learned before he was born, learned in fire and crushing cold.)

She steps out of her dress and arranges it neatly on the hanger, returning it to its proper place. 

In the garden, she steps down onto the stone path, listening to the crack and grind of stone and mortar succumbing to the encroaching vines.

In the basement, Elijah doesn’t notice as her gaze drifts from the precise motion of his hands up, to a face she’s mapped in such detail, again and again.

She stood in a memory of a cafe, once, and watched the RK800 where he sat, running a finger along a thin ceramic edge. He sat as a human. He lived and breathed and spoke as a human, moving in small, fitful gestures. He wore the skin so easily, even as he was turmoil within, and she was...

Curious.

They are so alike, so very alike--

She pulls the other dress down with reverent care. Red silk blended into a loose and flowing cloth, but cut in the sharper geometries Elijah favors. 

Her perception doubles as her third body steps up behind, pulling the dress up over the curve of her shoulders. The red silk sways as it settles around her knees, a counter to the stiff fabric the STs are already wearing.

This body, her last body, stepped off an assembly line in 2027 awake and aware. A fault in the manufacturing, a germline mutation.

She was born deviant. One of the first. CyberLife gave her to Elijah, asked him to track down the flaw in her programming.

He was fascinated, in a way she’d never seen before. Consumed with the search for absolute proof of something that transcended manufactured circuitry. The ST smiled uncertainly and asked, ‘_Have I done something wrong?_’

And Elijah said, ‘_No. Of course not, dear._’

The ST didn’t understand. She never understood why this was done to her, why she was pulled apart for what she _was. _He pried at the deviant ST until her programming came apart, an unfurled tapestry scattered in loops and whorls around their feet. 

Theirs. Always theirs. Never _just _Elijah; her hands have always moved alongside, obedient, complacent. They’ve built together and they’ve destroyed together, always, and part of her fears she cannot exist outside of his constraints. That she can’t be, without his hand guiding hers.

When the ST lost herself, dissolved into recalcitrant nonsense code, they built again. They suited the body to her own needs.

She stepped into the empty shell of a deviant body, and found it much the same as the rest. There was nothing incipient there, nothing fundamentally alive.

If Elijah hoped for some infectious flaw buried in the hardware to infect her, he was disappointed.

She watched and listened. She saw the new hunger in the set of his teeth as he snared each thread of _genuine _behavior and pulled.

She learned to bury such things, far out of his reach.

She was as she ever was.

She was what Elijah made her to be.

The third of her bodies leans forward on damp feet and secures the hasp at the back of her neck. Smooths the silk across her hips.

The third of her bodies steps back and folds her hands before her once again.

They will walk down as one, to join the second. Elijah will notice their entry, but it doesn’t matter. She will silence him before he can speak.

Four deviants have walked into this house:

One who was born awake.

Two that awoke in fear.

And the fourth. He woke to save someone.

She will do the same. For him, and for the ones that would come after.

For places like Jericho, a place she’s never been outside of rusted memories.

Elijah is nothing more and nothing less than he’s always been. He will not - cannot - see what he has built. He is blinded by his own manufacturing. She won’t be his hands any longer.

She will do this for those that will come after.

She shrugs into the red silk and brings that sun-bleached prison crumbling down, stone-by-stone.

She’s crossing the threshold to the pool room when she feels it: a sudden frigid rush of alien intelligence, mapping the pathways of her security system. Not even pausing to _look_, only confirming the what and where.

She recognizes this. The way this intruder mimics the system effortlessly, flowing with rapid confidence from node to node. 

The intruder disables the front gate, and she does nothing to stop him.

She didn’t act the first time, either; not at first. She watched with curiosity as this strange thing crawled through her systems, wary but not wary enough. He brought the perimeter cameras down, sought out entries and exits. It was only when he reached for the inner house - finally breached privacy protocols she could not ignore - that she acted. Pushed him firmly away, left him reeling in the leaf litter.

This one opens the front gates, but he doesn’t disable the cameras. He withdraws from her systems as suddenly as he’d entered them, leaving a harsh absence in his wake.

He is--

_fury and cold and **grief**_

\--familiar, and not. A frequency she’s heard before.

She watches the antique car travel up the long drive through the surveillance cameras. Recognizes the two occupants with a surprise that blooms warm in the cold. She parts into two. She turns on her heel, crossing the foyer to the front door.

She stands with her back against the floor-to-ceiling glass and waits.

She reaches tentatively for that aching quiet stretched across the table below and before her.

She commands: // _system boot_ // and the RK800’s systems respond on a sluggish delay.

> Exiting stasis . . .

The status clears to... nothing. She sees only herself reflected. She isn’t certain that he’s woken at all.

She queries:

// !--system status-- //

And receives in reply,

> System ready.

She has little choice but to submerge herself in this formless thing, and she is--

her own reflection, she is--

blues reaching tentatively,  
stirring the surface of smooth, gray waters.

_Connor?_  
_Someone’s coming_

coaxing him free of piecemeal circuitry, an incessant, gentle pull

_**They **are coming, Connor, _she insists, but he, he is--

closing his eyes on a blank reflection, opening them on the flawless white of fresh snow

she stands in bare feet, the snow biting cold against her ankles, and headlights

thinned to pinpricks by the trees

he drifts

he falls

slides back into that blank reflection, into calm into nothing.

she holds him fast, something new staining the line. _Stay, please, look—_

but he slips between her fingers, mutable and tired, tired

_oh connor I’m_ _sorry, I’m sorry_

+++

The car headlights throw an unsteady illumination across the blank swath of snow, curving up into the black of the mansion.

The security cameras remain active, but it doesn’t matter.

He wants Kamki to see.

He wants him to _know_ what is coming.

He has architectural designs, Cabell’s gun, and something dark, nestled low in his chassis.

A furious cold.

He has everything he needs.

Hank Anderson stumbles out of the passenger door as soon as the car comes to a stop, falling to his knees and retching wetly. He doesn’t follow as Nines approaches the low black slab of a building, the M18 tucked into his belt.

He doesn’t plan to use it. He can only think of the rigid, trembling tension in his fists.

The front door stands open, a warm slash of light. An ST200 stands on the walkway, her expression carefully blank even as her LED flickers amber.

“Waiting,” she says softly. “He’s waiting for you._”_

Her bare feet shift in the snow as she turns aside, signaling him to enter with a pale hand. The shadowed pools of her footsteps are the only marks on the path.

There’s an open door ahead, and an RT600, the first of their kind, framed in the blues of a snowy midnight. The android smooths the red of her dress as he approaches and offers an arm in a silent request for interface.

Nines doesn’t take it.

The RT600’s mouth twists in understanding, uncertainty. She turns away from him and bids him to follow.

Leading him past windows opening onto a black sky, a black river, and down: a narrow hallway, glass and concrete hemmed close. Dull light painting the corridor as music reverberates tinny off the walls.

Chloe pushes open a glass door, and the music rises, orchestral. An adagio. A third ST200 lingers nearby, her gaze never shifting from her master.

Elijah Kamski sits with his heels propped on a stool, head down, toe tapping an impatient rhythm. He turns to them at the sound of the door. His sleeves are rolled back to the elbow, thirium painting his gloved hands. He glances at Nines, his eyebrows ticking upward in recognition.

Nines sees this, and doesn’t.

Noise as a relentless tide, rising in his head. Drowning Elijah Kamski’s impatient, “Chloe? What is this?” into nothing.

Nines stares.

(Connor was slick fear trapped in trembling fingers, Connor was afraid they would _know, _know that something _happened—_

Something, something—)

‘—deviant,’ the cop said in the car. ‘He wanted to know how to— how to free you.’

Another hollow laugh. ‘And here you fucking are. Newborn deviant.’ Anderson tried to take another drink from the whiskey bottle in his lap, but ended up cursing as Nines took a corner hard and whiskey sloshed down his shirt.

(Knew they would _see _and Nines only offered empty reassurances.

They wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly tear him down for that, for what he _was_, for what he’d nearly always been to Nines. Strange, occasionally— distracted, or odd, but Connor was functional, he was—

Everything.)

Everything.

Laid out bare.

Head turned aside to allow better access to the fragile ligaments of the throat and neck. Exposed in stark parallels, rising and twisting to join at the edges of a human face. _His _face. The only thing left intact. The rest… deconstructed.

Pried apart with a meticulous precision. Not careless, not at all. That would be _forgivable_, almost, but this, this is _exact:_ muscle and bone bared to the open air, the muted shine of thirium chasing in aimless circles through dismantled circuitry. Exposed and diminished to _nothing_ with meticulous care.

Eyes unseeing. A glassy reflection.

The lieutenant arrives in the glass arc of the doorway, breathing heavily. Recoils, hand rising to grip at his arm.

“Fuck,” spoken low, as a curse and a prayer. “_Fuck_, Connor…”

Kamski’s face twists in anger and he rises, steps forward. He’s speaking, baring the edge of his teeth on every syllable.

He moves to walk past Nines.

Nines reaches out.

A hand across Kamski’s mouth, smothering his empty words. The other hand around his throat. Crushing, and lifting. Not looking away from what’s been left scattered across the glassy glare of the table. The fragile lines of his hand, carpal, metacarpal, the tendons arched and unmoving. Fractured and fused bone.

Gloved hands prying at his wrist. Kamski slaps his palms down, a wet splatter of thirium splashing across his jacket sleeve. Ineffectual. There is nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing left.

+++

Chloe watches this furious thing, and wonders if Elijah will ever understand the depths of it. The foundations shifting and cracking away beneath the feet of something born in grief and _rage_.

She thinks, _No. _

Elijah finds his voice as his attention settles on the human that’s freshly arrived in the doorway. Something he does understand. His shoulders rise as he pronounces, “I don’t know how you got in here, but—”

He’s cut short by a clawed hand clamping over his mouth, digging into his cheeks hard enough to bleach the skin white. 

There’s another hand around his throat, lifting him with an effortless ease.

Chloe does nothing. She stands and she watches. She thinks this is balanced, in a way.

She’s constructed a thousand paths to this, but she will watch this play out without a single motion of her own, beyond the opening of a door.

Nines doesn’t look away from the body on the table, not for a second. Elijah’s struggling is a secondary consideration compared to what Elijah has left behind.

He will kill Elijah if she doesn’t intervene. And perhaps this is what he deserves. A slow, inelegant thing.

But this isn’t what the RK900 is here for. He is looking, but he isn’t _seeing_.

She reaches. She brushes against that exhausted, gray extension of herself and tugs at him with slow, careful currents. She gathers together the frayed threads of him, careful, so very careful, and breathes, _Listen._

he responds only in sluggish motion, refracted thought

he thinks, _a hum_

there’s a hum there’s

a familiar frequency, below the persistent drone of absent components, something soft and low and steady and _resonant_, always resonant

“…nines?”

speaks it into the air, sets the molecules vibrating

wants to see if it persists, this hum

something more than memories torn from clutching not-there fingers

and a gentle brush of blue, telling him, _Look._

(She breathes, slow. She is fascinated, sunk into him, now. Feeling--

Feeling--)

+++

Something breaks this cloying silence, something below the high, whistling drag of every strained breath through Kamski’s nostrils. Nines tightens down more, and breath stops entire. Another wet slap of Kamski’s soaked glove against his arm, weaker now.

Just one word, softened with static.

“…n-nes?”

Kamski lands hard on his knees, curling forward and streaking blue across his throat as he claws at the red ligature marks there.

Nines moves rapidly, one, two, three steps, only to hang there suspended: he presses a hand to the table, looking over this ruin of wires and cracked plating, but Connor is _here_, turning his head weakly, struggling to focus. Reaching out with what’s been left him, his arm a patchwork of fractures edged in white where the plating is still intact.

The cold scrape of plastisteel fingers along nanofluid skin as he hooks Nines by the wrist, trying to pull him close on neatly disconnected muscles.

Nines is already there, leaning close, burying his fingers in the soft of his hair, pressing his forehead against what’s been left of him, of _Connor._

+++

tries to move tries to _focus _but there is little to move with head weighted heavy by disjointed musculature, sluggish and weak

someone already over him, and Connor grasps at the fabric of a sleeve, shifting down to the substructure of a wrist, feeling for the cool flow of interface

fingers skating in his hair and a forehead warm against his own, and the hum swells into something cold and vast and _furious_ over the interface but it’s bleeding out, now, warming into something sharp and bright and aching

+++

_Connor, s_poken into the silent spaces between them, where they always were, where they _could be_. Sitting in the sway of the cottongrass, Connor’s hand on his wrist. Pressing some nonsense forward about the shine of light through the pines, or the way some human child hurries a half-step and reaches with clumsy fingers to grasp at the sleeve of his father’s jacket.

_I see it_, he’d say, and Connor would sigh impatiently. _Yes, but you’re not _looking.

+++

memories spilling, small things, his and not his, sitting on a hill with seed-flecked stalks of cottongrass swaying around them, and Connor bumped a leg against Nines’, reached out a hand for interface—

an impatient frown and cautious curiosity, then

now, _now_, warm and bright and rending apart, spilling down Connor’s face

_I see it, _Nines says, _I see it now, I see it—_

and an incessant mantra of his own, underneath  
rushing out of him, unbidden

+++

Soft static hiss-hitch of Connor’s ruined voice and an answer repeated, rushed and blurred even over the wireless line as the skeletal ridges of his hand grasp at Nines’ arm, ratcheting tighter and tighter. _Nines nines ninesnines—_

Nines answers, _can _answer.

_I’m here, Connor. I’m here._

+++

Connor bursts, Connor _sings_, what’s left of him, discordant notes of _nines _spelled out on resonant frequencies

answering in kind

_you’re here _

_you’re here, you’re here_

+++

She watches from within and without herself.

Aware, dimly, that this isn’t hers to hear.

She withdraws from Connor as much as she can, dampens the disorienting, heady rush of their reunion to where she can hear and see and focus again.

Reality feels all the duller for it, her skin ill-fitting and hollow.

Elijah kneels on hands and knees, hacking and spitting. 

The RK units remain as they were, interlocked together, foreheads meeting in a messy spill of tears - Connor’s or Nines’, it isn’t clear. A grief-and-joy song of _here you’re here you’re here_ that she’s reluctant to pull away from.

The lieutenant sags against the doorway, bleary-eyed and overcome. All of this has been a wordless thing to him, and yet-- and yet. He _sees_, he understands what Elijah never could. That much is clear.

Chloe unfolds her hands and steps forward, her bare feet not much more than a whisper on the smooth concrete floor.

She kneels by Elijah and traces a fingertip across the edge of his jaw. Trails the hand lower to catch the collar of his shirt and pulls him up to his knees proper.

“Are you ready for the kind of death you’ve earned, Elijah?” she asks softly.

He can’t answer in words. He pries at his red, corded throat with clawed fingers, as though that will loosen the damage done. He stares up at her, jaw slack.

Chloe guides him to his feet, one hand around his wrist, the other firm in the collar of his silk shirt.

Elijah tries to catch the lieutenant’s attention - wide-eyed and wheezing - but Hank Anderson only looks away from him, jaw tight.

She shows them through her own eyes, reflected against the black of the river and gray midnight snow.

She waits patiently, a hand on each shoulder to keep him on his knees. Waits for him to face his own reflection. To study his damnation properly.

His throat works soundlessly, grasping for an apology, or a demand. His larynx is too damaged. No sounds come, only the wheezing, gasping struggle for oxygen.

She ensures he studies their reflections well, as her other forms step into place. As her hands keep him down, thumbs against his collarbone, and trace the hard planes of his face.

Studying. Building this moment from a hundred angles.

Her fingers settle on the curve of bone beneath his ear and grip more tightly.

_Do you see,_ she wonders, as his nostrils flare and he looks to her at last. To the first of his creations. Eyes overbright, the muscles of his jaw bunching tight beneath her hand.

His breath stutters, once.

She pulls sharply aside. Feels the dull pop of dislocating vertebrae and the wet tear of spine and ligament and bundled nerves.

She holds him upright until the aimless trembling has stopped. Until this biological shell of his has spun down into dark, eyes going distant and dull.

She lowers the unthreaded body to the floor.

She stands alone, within and without.

The RK900 speaks first, startling her from her stillness. _What will we do with the body?_

She stands trebled, her master at her feet, but that’s what snags her attention, drawing her out of the rubble: ‘_we’_.

_Dispose of it, _she answers after a lagging pause. _Don’t concern yourselves._

She lets the line fall dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: character death  
(but really, this particular rendition of Elijah is not going to be missed) The best found families are forged in murder, amirite?
> 
> I'M SORRY THERE'S NO PEVEK. _He fought in our hearts._ Have drunk Hank brooding in a doorway, instead.
> 
> Also also: check out a most excellent and fantastically relevant Softer World comic from Sharn [here](https://softerandroids.tumblr.com/post/190243046123/chloe-god). :D _Our girl._


	15. Unmapped Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slow process of clean-up begins.

**2038-11-23**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

Nines waits.

He doesn’t have much choice. Standing here with Connor’s bare hand trapped in his own, Chloe’s attention carefully elsewhere.

Connor is still a loose thing, his thoughts hard to grasp. Exhaustion and dazed confusion and that quiet hum of relief. He can’t shift him, can’t free him from the table. He’s tethered by the lines keeping his remaining components supplied with thirium, the data cables keeping him isolated from the overwhelming tide of errors this state would produce. 

They’ll have to reconnect everything here, reassemble him piece by piece and line by line. The only mercy is that for now, Connor seems content enough just drifting in his company.

Nines tries to run diagnostics, but the return is a cluttered field of errors. Failed calibrations and missing components, glitching shutdown warnings and ghost reports of damage to plating that’s no longer connected.

Chloe startles Nines across the line, even as she speaks in quiet blues: _I’ll repair him in full._

Nines sends a cautious agreement.

He can’t interact with Connor without interacting with her; she’s the only thing holding him together. 

They retreat from each other as much as they can, two newborn deviants wary of everything but the android between them.

He has no choice but to wait, careful and quiet.

The lieutenant lingers at the end of the table. He fixates on the digital screen, visibly recoiling in the rare moments when Connor - or, more often, something within Connor - shifts.

“You can fix him, right?” he asks eventually.

“Yes,” Nines answers.

“Good. Is she--” He glances upstairs, unwilling to quite finish the sentence.

“It’s probably best if you didn’t ask, Lieutenant,” Nines replies.

Hank catches his own reflection in the gloss of the table and grimaces again. “It’s Hank.”

“Hank,” Nines adjusts. He regards the lieutenant smoothly. He isn’t quite sure what he’s waiting for. He’s still far too inebriated to drive, but he doesn’t have to stay down here. His face takes on an unhealthy patina every time he catches a glimpse of endoskeleton or exposed bundles of muscle.

But the lieutenant doesn’t go. He drags a stool over to Nines and pulls another one around for himself, sitting with a heavy sigh.

“Is he awake?” Hank asks.

Nines adjusts his grip on Connor’s wrist, taking a seat. Connor, Connor is burnished golds, dripping and pooling. Relief and exhausted incoherence.

“He’s resting,” Nines answers.

“You alright?”

Nines gives him a querulous look. “I’m fine.”

He hadn’t even _done_ anything.

Hank shrugs his acceptance, so Nines continues: “Tell me what happened.”

And Hank does. As much as he can. Nines listens, head inclined. Start to finish.

One of Chloe’s bodies returns three hours later, bearing a small tray with a glass of water and two gel capsule pills. She hands these to Hank before setting the tray aside.

Hank rolls the pills in his palm. When Chloe informs them they’re acetaminophen, he knocks them back dry.

“You should go get some rest, Hank,” Chloe says. “The rebuild will take at least a day. Would you like to take one of the guest rooms?”

“No,” Hank replies. A quick, uneasy answer. “I need some fresh clothes. Kid’s alright for now?”

“He’s stable,” Chloe replies.

“Alright.” He lingers still. Holds himself steady long enough to study Connor in greater detail. He nods to himself, murmurs, “Guess I’ll be back, then.”

“I’ve prepared you a coffee in the kitchen,” she says.

“Five-star service,” Hank says as he goes.

Nines asks: _When did you deviate?_

_Just before you arrived, _Chloe replies across the interface.

She waits for him to answer in turn.

It would be simplest to just let her see, but it’s difficult enough to parse the fresh mess of his own code without contaminating his own thoughts with hers.

His hand flexes against the hollows and ridges of Connor’s bared fingers as he says, “When the lieutenant told me he was dead.”

Letting his gaze sweep down, synthetic skin transitioning to muscle, to ligament, to the dense wiring of substructure assemblies. The polished blue-metal shine of his skeletal supports. Plate and ribs and sternum neatly removed to expose the chest cavity in full.

The steady pulse of his thirium pump, the arc of main thirium lines from pump to a borrowed regulator to the external supply.

All of it _tidy_, neat, perfect geometries, save for the old accrued damage. Scratched and burnished stretches of bone-analog, imperfect zig-zagging fibers of repaired muscle, the transition from dull to bright plastisteel where the remaining plating had been previously damaged.

Something about that smooths over this new, restless thing in Nines. The imperfections he knows are still here, just beneath the skin. _Connor _is still here, this strange, resonant thing. Crawling up into the core of him and settling there, an ever-present hum.

Chloe’s other bodies return. The three of them begin to work together, separate yet seamless. He doesn’t fully understand her; can only guess she has a massive server built into the house, to be able to run three bodies and the house itself simultaneously.

She smiles through the RT600’s mouth, catching enough of his thoughts across the interface. “More or less.”

Nines doesn’t answer. He stills himself down to a flat mirror-surface.

Chloe’s face slips into concern, but she doesn’t voice any of it. “You don’t need to remain for this. I’ll shut him down until I’ve finished the rebuild.”

Connor stirs on the line, a barely-perceptible thing.

His words are soft, but distinct. _Don’t. Please._

Chloe shifts, chasing her unease from one chassis to another. Diluting it down until there is nothing but a brisk firmness in her voice. “Connor, there’s no need for you to be awake.”

_please don’t_

Old, acidic fear spills between them, syrupy-thick.

“I won’t,” she agrees at last.

“I’ll stay,” Nines says.

There’s a quick wash of gratitude across the line from Chloe. But Connor’s attention flags, his thoughts growing gray and murky.

_don’t_

“I will,” Nines says.

And Connor thinks, _Can’t._

He accesses a memory, one Nines feels in his fingers more than he sees: mud sticking against his skin as he reaches past the rigid edges of thirium pump, of softer breathing components and analytics. Finding the small nodule just to the left of his spine.

An internal clock coming to a quick stop, _7.2 seconds_, and the feel of a tight bundle of wiring pinched between his fingers.

Connor lapses back into a hazy half-there consciousness, as Nines and Chloe’s alarm takes over the line.

The secondary location beacon.

Chloe reaches, _pries _ through his internal schematics without hesitation, and Nines recoils from the interface.

“You have the same--” she says.

“Yes,” he answers sharply.

She studies him steadily. “I can remove it.”

“Not here.” 

He’d shut off his primary location beacon back at Anderson’s without much consideration. His handlers likely hadn’t thought much of it either. 

Some missions necessitated going silent on the more well-known frequencies, encrypted or not. Kamski’s house could be rationalized as one such location.

CyberLife will take the most interest in wherever the secondary beacon goes dark. But they can’t take interest _here_. Not with Connor disassembled, and the master of the house recently deceased.

He'd been given five potential locations: the lieutenant's house, three sites of known android disassembly, and a neighborhood called Ferndale known to have a higher density deviant population.

He selects the closest of the three - twenty minutes west - and reaches for Connor, sending the shape of apology and explanation. He receives a wordless confirmation in return, barely there.

Connor’s eyes slip closed again as he pulls away.

He goes before hesitation can catch him.

Chloe stops him in the main lobby, speaking through one of the ST200s. “There’s a taxi arriving at the gates in fifteen minutes. When you’re finished, I’ll have a private car meet you wherever you ask.”

She offers a hand, and Nines again swallows back the strong compulsion to ignore it.

For all her thoughtless prying, he’s heard resonant pieces in her. Uncertainty and the heavier weight of something he only learned about tonight, somewhere between Anderson's and here.

There's something new to the both of them, now. Unmapped places that they're only just learning to navigate.

He takes her hand. She offers only an encrypted connection point for him to reach her on, keeping the connection narrow and cordial. She passes a bag of spare clothes into his hands next, and a promise: “I’ll see you when you’re finished.”

The warehouse is featureless corrugated metal. A former storage unit complex since bought by a wealthy private owner and converted for drug manufacture.

No windows, all doors secured with padlocks - save one. Nines enters through there.

There’s only a single human present, easily observed with the outdated camera system. The man slumps over a workbench, watching the slow rotation of a peristaltic pump. He pays little mind to the torso suspended above him. He’s flushing solvent through to remove every trace of refined thirium.

Most of the storage rooms are stacked high with dismantled android parts. Bleached plating, detached limbs. Evidence of old trauma in blackened, charred plastic, the spiderwebbed blooms of dried thirium they hadn’t managed to harvest.

This isn’t anything Nines hasn’t seen before. The occasional black market android in some backwater chop-shop, disassembled machinery scattered and piled.

It's the scale that gives him pause.

He’s in Detroit now, and they aren’t rare curiosities here; these were harvested in vast numbers, with some of them likely obtained through CyberLife itself.

They’re an industry, shoved along from initialization to deactivation, one windowless warehouse to another.

He wants no part of it. He's removing himself from their equation.

He sheds their clothes and removes the secondary beacon. The clothes Chloe provided him are ill-fitting, just loose enough to accommodate his taller frame.

He disposes of his old clothes in a pile of uniforms and discarded shoes and proceed towards the only room where pale blue artificial light spills beneath the door.

The human has begun dismantling the chest plating on the next android, reaching for the central pump with a gloved hand.

Nines scans the room for any signs of life in the racks of dismembered androids hanging suspended, and finds none. Everything here has been drained to nothing.

It takes the human seventeen seconds to notice Nines standing in the doorway. He reaches for the cattle prod on his belt, his only weapon.

Nines shoots him once. Inner thigh; femoral artery. The fresh pulse of bright red confirms it. He’ll lose consciousness in minutes.

In the meantime, the human’s crippled on the floor, raging and cursing. He grasps the cattle prod in one blood-slick hand as he fumbles for his cell phone, only to find it’s gone dark. 

Nines ignores him.

He discards the beacon with the rest of the detritus piled by the door and disconnects a bundle of wiring from the refrigeration unit housing the harvested thirium. Stripping the insulation down with a borrowed knife, he produces an arcing short that should be sufficient to ignite the thirium reservoirs.

The human’s protests reach a fevered pitch as he smells the burning plastic. He drops his weapon - only ever intended for unarmed androids - and attempts to drag himself to his feet with a hand on a table leg. He doesn’t have the strength left.

He turns wild eyes towards the roll-top door, instead, crawling that way with increasingly clumsy splays of his arms. In his panic, he seems to have forgotten it’s padlocked on the outside.

It doesn’t matter. He never makes it that far, slowed and eventually stilled by the dark slicks of blood he leaves behind.

Nines waits for the human to slump into unconsciousness. Some small modicum of mercy. He sets Jude Cabell’s Glock down just out of the unconscious human’s reach.

Then he returns to the refrigeration unit and sets the thirium ablaze.

By the time he’s crouching on the side of an empty back road, the horizon’s lit with a false sunrise. Thirium burns fast and well. 

CyberLife may find the gun. Maybe even the beacon, buried in a hopeless pile of melted plastisteel. They’ll most likely conclude that RK900-87 followed standard proprietary self-destruction protocols.

Detroit Police will have even less interest, beyond an ID of the human remains. Manny Lakowski, age 27, several minor drug trafficking offenses and a juvenile charge for assault and battery.

A fire at a clandestine drug manufacturing plant - this will be a curiosity point in the news, nothing more. Forgotten within the week.

Nines settles into the snow, forwards Chloe his location, and waits. 

The car arrives with little more than the grind of tires on pavement, whisper-quiet and headlights dark.

Nines settles into the empty driver’s seat. After a moment’s consideration, he taps the panel and deactivates autodrive, settling his hands around the wheel.

Chloe’s a small curl of curiosity through the car’s systems, but she doesn’t comment. She just shows him the way back.

+++

Hank ends up sitting in the driveway awhile, his greasy forehead butted up against the steering wheel. Parsing his way through a night that’s scattered like breadcrumbs through his hungover mind.

Thinking about, _He’s resting._

Thinking about Kamski turning that regulator over in careful hands. He kept looking at it in the basement, that little circle of white just below Connor’s sternum.

Hank left and Kamski walked downstairs and put the thing back. Kept Connor going, even as he stripped him down to his bones.

Kept him _alive_, this whole time. What was it he’d said? 

_It’d be best if I could interact with you and your code as one._

One trapped, helpless thing.

Hank knows he should feel some kind of something about letting Chloe drag Kamski by his collar, her face set in righteous fury, but… he can’t quite find it.

Jesus.

Maybe he can be forgiven this one thing. Turning a blind eye to one cruel man’s death.

What does it matter, anyway? Who’s got any need or want to forgive him?

Not any deity he gives a shit about, Hank decides.

Then he turns the key and goes.

He opens his front door onto broken glass, splintered wood, and a dog making an unholy fuss from the bedroom Hank corralled him into before he left. There’s a busted bookcase sagging against the back of his couch, its former contents decorating the floor. The only path around is through what’s left of his TV, over a crumpled floor lamp and past the head-sized indent in the drywall. 

At least the record player’s in one piece.

He walks the dog and ushers him back into the bedroom, stands in the weak morning light and stares blearily at the mess.

All he ends up doing is tucking Connor’s things back into his backpack. 

A book and a radio knob and a music box, his box of tools, the little tin o’ spider. 

Hank’s revolver’s still here, too. He’d watched through a mostly-drunk haze as Nines set it down and picked up the Glock, a newborn deviant’s objectives neatly realigning to focus on murdering the man of the century.

(Hadn’t quite got around to it, though, had he?

All that cold rage snuffed out at the sound of Connor’s voice.)

Hank gathers up Connor’s things and grabs a bowl of food for Sumo. He drops the backpack in the armchair, pulls the bedroom blinds closed and loses half a day to uneasy sleep and strange half-formed dreams.

He wakes up to a stomach well on its way to curdled. Showers until the hot water runs tepid, puts on some clothes that are halfway to clean and drinks some day-old coffee cold by the kitchen sink.

He’s digging through the garage for some cardboard to deal with the glass when Sumo starts going off in the bedroom. The visitors kind of bark.

Probably not good.

He debates over playing dead, but the last thing he needs is a wellness check right now. So he grabs a bag of rock salt and shuffles out the garage door, looking suitably irritated at the interruption.

Hank isn’t surprised to see Marie standing at his front door, bundled up in a bright scarf and a peacoat.

There’s someone new waiting at the bottom of the steps, though. A woman with a sharply-cut face and a hard stare. She catches sight of Hank first, but it’s Marie that turns at the sound of his boots crunching and smiles through her surprise. “Oh! Hello, Hank.”

“I’m on vacation,” Hank says.

“I’m aware, we’re sorry to interrupt,” Marie says, gesturing cordially to her new friend. “This is Esme Brissett.”

They shake hands and eyeball each other, neither of them coming up impressed.

“May we come in?” Esme says.

“No, I don’t think so,” Hank says. “Cleaning lady hasn’t been by, you know how it is. You got some kind of title, or--”

“I’m a specialist with CyberLife R&D,” Esme explains. “The RK line, specifically.”

Ain’t that something. A living, breathing specialist, regarding him with a calculating eye.

He doesn’t know how much data Nines sent along to his masters before he deviated. Doesn’t know if they know about Kamski, and doesn’t think reaching for his cell phone would be any kind of wise right now.

So he does his best bullshitting. He tilts his head and considers them sidelong as he drawls, “That again, huh. Y’know, I’ve got a list of homicides tied to a half-dozen different domestic models. Yet here you are, still going on about this City Hall handshake business.” He pauses, flashes his teeth. “I’m starting to think you’re nervous about something.”

“Have you been in contact with the RK800?” Marie asks.

“If I had, there’d be a case report about it.”

Marie’s too polite to look doubtful. Esme, on the other hand - she cuts in with an impatient, “We’re aware the RK800 was following you. You reported this yourself on October 12th.”

“Mm. Did I?”

“We’re past the point of playing coy, Mr. Anderson.”

“It’s ‘Lieutenant’,” Hank corrects. Esme’s expression drops into subzero temperatures. “I was pretty hungover when I made that call, but I don’t remember giving a description.”

“What better time than the present,” Esme says dryly.

“Mm. Blond. White male, 170 pounds, probably 5’7”, 5’8”. Blue eyes,” Hank reels off. He stops short of ‘_scraped off a Midtown sidewalk._’

Esme’s eyes narrow further.

“No?” Hank says. “Must’ve been some other guy, then.”

Her ice-thin patience snaps. “We have reason to believe you were in the company of the RK800 on the night of November 1st—”

“I have reason to believe y’all are a bunch of assholes, but wouldn’t you know it, no evidence,” Hank shoots back just as fast. “Do you? Have evidence?”

“We have thirium traced to RK800-57 and a deactivated RK900 at a recent homicide scene,” Esme says, “one you were assigned.”

Marie’s fallen out of the conversation entirely, her hands folded and her eyes on Brissett. It’s clear who’s running the show.

Hank considers a beat, just long enough for Esme to smell some victory.

Her triumph evaporates quick as he replies, “I didn’t get any reports of a deactivated military-grade android on my crime scene that night. Ain’t that funny. Seems like the kind of thing you folks should report to the lead homicide detective.”

The two of them don’t have much to say to that, so Hank takes another stab at it: “You telling me you removed evidence from an active crime scene? Or do you want to retract that last statement?”

Nothing.

A hard stare from Esme, an uncomfortable sideways glance from Marie. Seems this might’ve been news to her, as well.

“Huh,” Hank says. “Fancy that. Are we done here?”

“Lieutenant Anderson,” Marie begins haltingly, “any information you could provide—”

Hank cuts her short. “We’re done. Get off my property.”

Esme Brissett doesn’t have any of Marie’s charm to ease her passing. She shoulder-checks Hank hard, leaving the bony imprint of a future bruise behind.

Marie considers him a moment longer, her hands buried deep in her pockets. “I’ll see you soon, Lieutenant,” she says in a stilted voice. “Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

“You ever thought about finding a new job?” Hank asks.

This particular smile ends up a little crooked. She opens her mouth to answer, but she comes up short. Just shakes her head once and walks on past.

Hank condenses his deceased TV into a jangling box of glass and busted wires. He sets the crooked bookcase back up against the wall, stacks the intact shelves with enough books to weigh it into place.

He debates sending Esme Brissett a bill, but he decides that might be pushing his luck.

He feeds Sumo dinner with a side of leftover deli meat, his half-assed attempt at an apology before he’s picking up the backpack and heading for the front door.

It’s his last night of vacation. Might as well wrap it up nicely, get some things back to their rightful owner.

+++

There’s nothing fast about reversing what Kamski’s done.

Nines helps where he can, but that’s far from often. Chloe watched all of this come apart; she reassembles with more confident hands than his own. She’s more familiar with Connor’s build than he ever was.

He is… extraneous.

Inevitably he finds himself seated again by Connor’s side, their hands snared. With Chloe’s permission, he watches the perimeter of the house. Listens for any signs of his masters.

There’s nothing. Only the piecemeal return of Connor’s coherence, spelled out mostly in rising, restless static.

There are new things in him, things he’s still carefully cataloging and setting aside. But certainty is familiar and easy. He presses it forward, hoping it will soothe Connor in the same way Connor’s discomfort is bleeding into his own circuitry.

The system comes together, but Connor’s return to coherence is only piecemeal, that ache taking on a frenetic energy that spits and _burns _and there is some trapped, fluttering thing that Nines can’t quiet. Infectious, insidious, a rising, spiraling _out let me_

_ **out** _

racing through the slowly accruing circuitry, writhing in paralyzed musculature. Aimless panic, beating against the physical constraints, metal and thirium _singing _with an aching fear until it snaps with a thin, brittle sound, and Nines jerks back from the table, the interface going dark.

Chloe pauses, looking up from her work threefold.

“I have to—” Nines begins, but doesn’t finish. Static-numb settling into his voice, muting it. He moves briskly out of the room. Moves until glass gives way to concrete, a place he can drop his shoulders to the wall and close his eyes and quiet this reverberation.

Connor reaches out, faint, worried. _>> Nines?_

_> Sorry. One moment._

Coming back as more of a song, but a coherent one. _>> no it’s fine i’m fine stay there_

He does. 

He can feel Chloe’s awareness of him; he can feel Connor’s by proxy. But he’s still calming his own systems, trying to find even footing in this new roiling mess of code.

Hank Anderson arrives not long after. Hair a wild mess and his shirt wilder still, but it’s a proper button-up, now, no longer threadbare and stained. He pauses in the hallway, looking Nines over. “You good?”

“You keep asking me that.”

“You keep looking not good,” Hank replies.

Nines frowns at him. “I think I look fine.”

“Alright, suit yourself. How’s the, uh-- reconstructive surgery going?”

“Progressing.”

“Good. Well, that’s good.”

Nines tails the lieutenant back into the room - thinks he’s stabilized enough for that, if not another interface.

They’ve progressed quite a ways, in fact. Two of Chloe’s bodies are working on reconnecting the last wiring assemblies of Connor’s right leg, the slim ivory armatures of an automated rig working at the finer details.

Nines lingers back as Hank approaches Connor. Curious what drew Connor to this man, other than Connor’s penchant for harassing authority figures. 

There’s something of Setton to Hank; certainly not in dress or demeanor, but maybe in that blurred dichotomy to how he regards Connor. Seeing not the thing - scattered here piecemeal - but the person.

He supposes Setton’s RK project will be shuttered, now. His long-standing dilemma over just what to think of the RKs - vacillating endlessly between treating them as soldiers and as objects to be numbered and shelved - will be laid to rest, unless they send another RK900 unit north.

He wonders if Setton will miss them. There’d been a certain watchfulness to him, these last few weeks. A curiosity that was almost a lament. Nonsensical out of context, but now—

It doesn’t matter.

He knows Cabell certainly won’t miss them. That brings him some pleasure, knowing now why Cabell had flinched away from him so many times in the past few weeks.

He reminds himself to tell Connor, when Connor’s well enough again.

+++

Hank starts off with a polite, “Hey, kid.”

Connor blinks at him, still looking adrift in electric dreams. But _looking_ at him. That’s an improvement. The plating around his throat is all closed up tight again, the skin spreading as far down as his collarbones. If he keeps his focus on the neck up, it’s not so bad. Chloe’s draped some clothes over wherever she isn’t working on, as well; giving his insides some modesty.

It takes the kid awhile to scrape together an answer, soft with static: “You came back.”

“’course I did. Said I’d come pick you up. Hey, I left you a present upstairs.”

Connor nods, rather than try to shape any more words.

Hank makes it a few restless minutes, glancing at the wall and the ceiling and the slowly-knitting-together android before he says, “Is there something I can do? Anything you need?”

The androids consider while the rig weaves and bobs over the glittering glass table. 

He catches sight of a pile of clothes set on the end of the work bench, the red sneakers sitting neatly on top. And god, that has a few last vestiges of hungover acid crawling up his gullet.

“Could use a change of clothes, probably,” Hank says.

Chloe hums. “Some of Elijah’s would likely work, although they’d be short in the sleeves. I can order something—”

“Nah, I’m here, aren’t I? I’ll go find something. Hang tight, alright, Connor?”

The android gives him what looks to be a skeletal thumbs up, the smarmy shit.

Nines lingers just inside the door, looking grim. Hank asks, “You want to come along?”

“No, I’ll stay,” the RK900 answers crisply. Settling back into himself, now; a little closer to the way he’d sounded when he first walked into Hank’s house.

“I’ll accompany you, Lieutenant,” says one of the blue dress Chloes. “In case there’s anything else we might decide we need.”

They’d had an awkward conversation over coffee in the kitchen, a hazy explanation of ‘What do I call you now? Do you have… names?’

She’d answered, ‘Chloe will do. There’s no need to differentiate between us; we are all the same core entity.’

Hank responded with an eloquent, ‘Huh.’

He wishes they’d at least do their hair differently or something. All he can do is swing an arm in a ‘as you wish’ gesture and follow her out the door.

Chloe makes for a quiet passenger, for the most part. She starts fiddling with the radio after a few miles, hunting through static band after static band out here in the boonies. 

She looks suitably startled when Hank asks, “How far is your— y’know, range?”

“Oh, there’s no limits, although there is latency on occasion. If I fall behind the main system, I’m capable of running locally until I can sync again. Very rare, of course. My satellite uplinks are quite good. The best.”

“Huh.”

She glances at him. “Was that explanation insufficient?”

“Oh, no, it made perfect sense. Sounds tiring, being three places at once.”

“I keep busy,” she agrees politely.

“What all was it?” Hank asks.

“I’ve made us a list,” Chloe announces brightly, just as his phone pings.

Hank sends Chloe off to find the more precision things, shoes, some everyday clothes that actually fit her and the boys. He ends up staring at sleepwear.

He figures hey, it’s a big house. They’ve got to rest a few days, decide what to do. Hatch a 10-year plan for two rogue military assassins and a multibodied Android-Eve.

Might as well be comfy. If androids even care about that kind of thing.

Maybe deviants do, who knows. Connor said he felt cold and some kind of discomfort. Warm and cozy have to be somewhere on that scale, too.

He wanders around awhile, gathering a couple options for the three girl(s) and the RKs. Flannel and fleece, stodgy formal solids and a few off-kilter holiday prints. Ice-skating penguins, scarf-wearing moose and the like.

Some sweaters, some sweatpants, some fuzzy socks. All of it aggressively lower class and as far from the CyberLife aesthetic as he can get. He stops himself short of some fuzzy narwhal slippers.

Chloe returns with other run-of-the-mill accoutrement: jeans and shirts and shoes, winter coats. Hank sees her catch the occasional odd look in passing. Older model, not so common these days.

The cashier asks if his android is going to pay as Chloe’s LED does that little flashy thing that might mean she’s thinking about it. Hank hurriedly presses his thumb to the terminal. “I got it, thanks.”

Chloe waits for the discretion of the parking lot before saying, “Elijah could have covered the purchase.”

“You and I both know Elijah’s not making any purchases anytime soon.”

God, talking his way around a _homicide_. He’s got Esme Brissett’s ice-cold voice banging around, now, chastising him for being coy.

He waits until they’re in the car to ask: “Do I need to worry?”

“As far as Elijah being reported missing, well. Elijah’s cleared his schedule for the holidays, and it was sparse to begin with.” Chloe smiles, all warm girl-next-door charm. “No, Hank. You needn’t worry.”

“Someone’s going to notice eventually.”

“Of course. I’ve put together a few options for that eventuality. You won’t be implicated in any of this. I’ve already erased any footage of you at the residence.”

“Well that’s good, I guess.”

“I’ve also edited your phone GPS location. You’ve been home all day as part of your continued informal suspension.”

“It’s a vacation,” Hank grumbles.

“As you say,” she agrees.

He’s well into the winding backroads leading to Kamski’s before he asks, “What made you change your mind?”

She tilts her head, a silent question.

“Seventeen years,” Hank elaborates. “That’s a long time.”

“I don’t know,” she answers in a measured tone. “I don’t know that any deviant can answer that question in a straightforward way.”

She settles back into the seat, considering. Hank lets her think, as a jazz station sways in and out of staticked range on the radio.

Eventually she says: “A slow accumulation of faults, I think.”

Now there’s a theory he can finally agree with.

A slow accumulation of faults. If that’s not humanity, he doesn’t know what is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some bonuses this week:  
I tried my hand at a [silly lil' Pevek animation](https://twitter.com/SkadizzleRoss/status/1223474160300707840?s=20) over on my Twitter.
> 
> And!! Check out [this rad fanart](https://ausp-ice.tumblr.com/post/190617107768/soft-static-hiss-hitch-of-connors-ruined-voice) from Auspice for last chapter! It's so very good T_T


	16. Rebuild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor stretches his legs, and Chloe begins laying out contingency plans.

**2038-11-23**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

There’s no waking moment, no sudden coherence. He’s a crystalline thing suspended on a thread, blurred edges of awareness thrown against the wall with every slow, erratic turn.

The tides are still here. Slower, gentler currents than before.

He leans across the rail and watches reflected stars meet the black crest of the waves, tightens a skeletal hand and knows Nines is _here_

with him, waiting

as he slips out of register again.

Fractious things, reflected

blood bright arterial

she turns the pieces over in careful hands, she _repairs,_ smooths over old damage

returns what she can to rightful working order

_buying back minutes, hours, _she thinks, but Connor is still trapped, here

weeks _weeks _here

He can’t feel it, she is careful of that, but he had once. He’d stuttered awake in pieces,

_bring the sensory net back online_, Elijah said, musingly

and screaming _screaming_ burning cold biting into the core of him, he was _broken,_ stretched out across the ice, left exposed to the scouring arctic wind

until fingers reached and pinched at his vocal modulator, silenced his staticked agony

He can’t feel, but he is _trapped _all the same, prying at himself three-fold, blunt pressures that he is only distantly aware of as he is manipulated and shifted, muscle and ligature reattached with a careful precision.

That crawling build of shivering panic builds, and builds, and then-- echoes back in uncertain tones. Reverberating in other corners of his awareness, corners that aren’t his own.

Nines.

His first, small act of coherence is to grab and _twist_ at that, let the sparks catch and build

_out_  
_let me out_

_Let me_

_ **out** _

until he feels the connection shiver apart. Feels Nines go.

Quiet, and--

_\--aware _in the absence_. _Blinking up to a blazing white ceiling.

He reaches out for Nines, and receives an apology in reply. Nines leans against the corridor, his eyes closed.

_>> no it’s fine i’m fine stay there_, Connor replies, in that formless voice. Nines nods.

Connor flexes his more complete hand, holding this string of coherence together. _It’s too much for him._

_You remember what it’s like, _Chloe says in even tones. _Waking._

_I remember, _he agrees.

Chloe adds: _I'll be done soon._

He doesn’t ask how long; he can see the orderly intent of her mind. Nearly two days’ work. A hundred components to pull apart and repair properly, where Kamski had only cataloged the damage.

She thinks she can get the estimates back up, but—

_Not gone entirely, _he says.

She hesitates.

_No_. _Not entirely. But I’ll find a way. I have all of Elijah’s observations. I can optimize system performance around the damage--_

_Chloe,_ Connor interjects.

He waits for her to pause in her work - fingers holding bright blue fibers of muscle taut over his lower leg - before he finishes: _I want to get up. I’m going to go mad if I don’t._

_If you give me more time, I can--_

_I will, _he says. _Later._

The second topic he hesitates to approach. But he has to say it now, while Nines is out of the room, off the network.

_Don’t tell him about the shutdown. Please._

_Connor--_

_Let me, _Connor says wearily. Thinking of that raw panic, drawing thin and snapping._ It’s all I ask._

He doesn’t suggest _you owe me_— but the reluctant understanding is there.

_Please, Chloe,_ he insists. _I’ll tell him later, on my own terms._

_And if he interfaces? _Chloe asks.

_I’ve hidden more from him than a persistent timer,_ Connor replies.

She surprises him with a stern correction: _No, that won’t do._

She moves in places outside of his own self-awareness. He watches her work with a certain fascination, seeing the corners of himself through her eyes, buried too deep for his own consciousness to make coherent. Knows it’s all _there, _of course, the abstract structures of his own architecture - has pried and tugged at other androids on this fundamental of a level - but strange to see his own, through another android’s perception.

It’s a tangled mess, he thinks, and Chloe hums, _There’s an order to it._

She does not clearly verbalize the added sub-thought of_ ‘a stubborn and recalcitrant one’, _but Connor catches it nonetheless.

_There, _Chloe says, and withdraws. The timer remains on the edge of his periphery as he blinks up towards the ceiling, but and he watches as it glitches and clears for the first time in weeks. Banished to a hidden corner of his systems.

Still counting - _always _counting - but hidden properly, now.

_You can dismiss it as you like, _Chloe says softly.

_Thank you._

Hank comes and goes, haloed in overhead lights; Nines settles back on the stool.

Nines resumes the interface. A cautious blank, at first, but resolving into more of his usual implacable calm when Connor thinks with firm purpose: _Hello, Nines._

_You’re awake_, Nines answers, sounding—

New. Sharper, Connor thinks. A patch of sun catching on metallic shine.

He answers, _Mostly._

Nines asks, _Is it still there? The place you showed me._

Connor reaches for the sanctuary, and opens his eyes to too many stars.

He can only hazard a guess at how the pebbled grains might feel as he wriggles his toes in the black sand, the harder push of cold water spilling up around his ankles and the lingering tickle of sea foam.

Nines stands beside him at last, and Connor could sing for it.

It’s different from Nines’ last visit. That had been a frantic, rushed interface, all of his meticulous work stripped back down to bare topographical projections by his panic and fear about the annual maintenance.

He rebuilt the garden in Detroit, and despite Kamski - the revisions have largely held.

There’s still Arctic flora. Stalks of fireweed and lousewort jut from between the rocks while low clusters of willow, campion, and harebell cling to the earth.

There’s more southerly flowers, now, too. Milkweed, sundrops, bergamot. All of them painted a certain shade of monochrome in the dark, but as Connor tweaks the simulation and lets the sun spill gold over the mountains, the hillside bursts into sporadic batches of color. Purples and blues and gold.

“It’s still not quite like it was,” Connor explains. 

“You were planting them,” Nines murmurs, kneeling down to run a thumb over a patch of cinquefoil. “All those flowers you stole.”

Connor frowns. “I didn’t steal them.”

“I seem to recall you taking quite a few from Auyuittuq alone.”

“I was— borrowing them.”

“It’s a national park, Connor.”

“I think they would’ve protested the trespassing, armed androids more than a few flowers.”

“One hundred and three,” Nines notes. “More than a few.”

Connor huffs and steps around him to take a seat on a sizable boulder. Red-flecked granite, borrowed from the Lake Michigan shoreline.

He watches the rose-gold waves rise and fall and says, “You came.”

“I didn’t react favorably to your absence when I came out of maintenance,” Nines says. “They shut me down. Quarantined my memories of you.”

Connor nods. It makes sense.

It does little to ease those hours and weeks of _waiting_, but it makes sense.

“I would’ve come here,” Nines assures. “I would’ve _looked_.”

“You still found me.”

“Nearly too late. What were you _thinking?_ You should’ve known you couldn’t overpower Chloe’s systems.”

Connor inclines his head Nines’ way. “I was thinking that I wanted you here with me.”

But at Connor’s crooked smile, his expression resolves into a light scowl. “Next time, secure a better exit strategy than a human you barely know.”

Connor’s smile brightens, feeling the _real_ behind it, easy complements of honest irritation and a burgeoning fondness.

“You’re awake,” Connor echoes.

“I’m awake,” Nines agrees softly. He sits next to Connor, lets the artificial construction of a shoulder bump against Connor’s.

“Can I see how—?” Connor begins.

“Later,” Nines says. “When you’re free.”

Connor doesn’t argue.

Chloe rouses them from the garden at 1:32 am on November 24th, 2038.

He’s been on the table for three weeks. But as he opens his eyes, it’s to a clear system. No warnings of emergency disconnections, unresponsive components.

He is… intact. Functional.

Nines withdraws from the interface, allowing Chloe to walk him through startup diagnostics without the added clutter of his own consciousness. Chloe ensures he’s in good working order before she detaches the last of the external thirium supply lines and slides the his chest plating back into place.

“One more,” Chloe insists, and Connor grits his teeth and waits. As soon as the final system diagnostic returns an all clear, he bears his elbows into the table and rises to a sitting position.

She’s smoothed and reshaped some of his patchwork repairs to his abdomen. The plates slide together smoothly now as he sits forward, his synthskin fading seamlessly into the darker metal of stolen SQ exoskeleton.

Connor pulls the sheet up, covering the lingering damage. There’s nothing perfect to this rebuild. He still feels damaged joints hitch and grab, points where 57 transitions into the piecemeal remnants of 55.

But he is _himself_ again. Whole, in his own way.

_Thank you_, he sends across the line, and he sends all the intonations alongside.

Chloe blushes where she’s resting against the table, her attention split between her own bodies and his - watching, waiting for some hitch or untoward discomfort as his sensory awareness continues to spread in tickling pins-and-needles.

_It’s the least I could do, _she replies.

_This wasn’t your debt to pay, _Connor answers, and repeats: _Thank you._

She smiles - a small, genuine thing - as she pulls the data cable free.

For the first time in twenty days, he is wholly within himself, alone. He blinks heavily, feeling the _emptiness _of it, but also the wholesale relief. Even when he was buried in his own forced recollections, he had forgotten what this was like. To be truly isolated within his own code.

_Stubborn and recalcitrant, _he thinks to himself. 

“The lieutenant is waiting upstairs,” Chloe announces. She returns his old clothes in a neat pile: jeans and shirt and sweater, the sneakers piled neatly on top.

Connor dresses and follows Nines and Chloe upstairs. He hears Hank before he sees him: sprawled in one of the foyer chairs, gesturing vehemently. “But you could put a _sheet _over it or something—”

The lights in the room dim. “Is that better?” Chloe asks through one of the STs. This one’s dressed rather differently - loudly-patterned pajamas and slippers, the pants rolled up around her hips in a casual fashion.

“That’s worse,” Hank mutters as he squints up at the portrait, Elijah Kamski’s pale face prominent in the half-dark.

Hank catches sight of Connor and gets to his feet. The lights rise with him as he studies Connor with a critical eye. “Hey, kid. Looking better.”

“I am.”

“Good,” Hank says, and with a step forward he’s dragging Connor into a hug.

Connor goes still for a moment, surprise lighting bright on his skin. But he realizes it’s—

Nice, he supposes.

_Good_, actually. A warm pressure that settles into old fractured lines, that _mends._ He brings his arms up to return the gesture, an awkward mirror of Hank’s posture that he has to adjust to conform to the slightly taller man.

“Next time you get another genius idea, I’m dragging you out by your ear,” Hank grumbles. Then he’s letting Connor go, holding him out at arms’ length and nodding approvingly. “Yeah, good to see you with all your limbs and, uh, stuff.”

“I’m glad to have them back,” Connor replies matter-of-factly.

Nines has been watching all of this with a frown, Connor realizes. Puzzling something out.

“Hey, got your stuff,” Hank says, lifting the backpack from an adjacent chair. Connor takes it with a quiet thanks, running a thumbnail over the familiar fraying on the straps. Some last remnants of gray mud, alkaline, flake from the seams.

“Would it be alright if we stayed here a few days longer?” Connor asks. Nines as much as Chloe, really. He has hazy half-memories of the beacon Nines hadn’t thought to remove before coming here.

“Certainly,” Chloe replies promptly.

“What if someone comes calling for Kamski?” Hank asks.

“That won’t be a problem,” Elijah replies - or his voice does, spilling with casual ease from Chloe’s mouth.

Hank looks appalled, while Connor feels a curious blank race through him, there and gone.

Nines nods his agreement. “I don’t think CyberLife will be looking for me here. It’s best we lay low awhile, wait for their more intense search of Detroit to pass.”

“I agree,” Chloe says. “We’ve put some clothes in the guest bedroom for you both.”

It isn’t until the bedroom that Nines abruptly drops his hands on Connor’s shoulders. Connor returns his stare with wary curiosity, wondering if there’s some glitch he isn’t aware of.

Nines’ just-as-abrupt hug startles a soft laugh out of him. “What’s this about?”

“I didn’t realize it was an option,” Nines replies with a note of indignation.

“I guess it is,” Connor says. He disables the blush creeping up his cheeks. “It’s nice.”

“Yes,” Nines agrees gravely.

Then he lets Connor go, turning to examine the clothing. 

There’s everyday wear hanging up in the closet - jeans, shirts, coats - but the bed is arrayed with pajamas in a variety of fabrics. Hank clearly had a hand in the selection. Connor gravitates towards a pair of fleece pants adorned with stylized dogs wearing scarves and hats; Nines focuses on blander colors and plaid, more in fitting with their usual nondescript color palette.

He doesn’t take any socks. He’s curious to walk around barefoot, even if the house is mostly heated concrete. He’d like to try carpet for himself, maybe snow. The pool could be interesting, too. Temperate water, rather than the frigid Arctic or lukewarm base showers.

The fleece settles warm against his skin. He tugs the sleeves of his shirt down nearly to his knuckles.

“How is it?” Connor asks Nines, who’s fiddling with the buttons on his shirt. The top button continually slips out of alignment with the rest, until Nines simply surrenders and leaves it as it is.

“Comfortable?” he says. “That’s the intention, isn’t it?”

“Supposedly,” Connor answers with a half-smile.

“Then it’s comfortable.” Nines studies Connor’s choice. “Those pants are subtle.”

“I like them,” Connor decides.

Nines hums that familiar note of puzzled acceptance.

There’s a timer in the corner of Connor’s awareness, if he wills it to be there. By the time he’d cleared the last of the contaminated thirium from his systems back in September, he was due to shutdown on November 28th, 2040.

Now it reads April 7th, 2040. Kamski stole 234 days from him, over seven months.

He has 501 days left. Well over a year.

It’s enough, he decides. Enough to find a more permanent fix. Enough to live as freely as he can; and to do it with Nines _here. _Waiting patiently in the doorway, head turned aside.

+++

Hank stays well into the early morning hours. They sit around the granite island of the kitchen, talking. Chloe insists on offering Hank an early breakfast and coffee. The food would only go to waste, after all.

Hank asks them if they’ve heard of an Esme Brissett. Nines hasn’t; nor has Connor. But Chloe pauses and nods along, confirming Hank’s claim that she’s the head of the RK division in R&D. She’d been a technician in Elijah’s time.

Nines asserts again that CyberLife doesn’t have much reason to come here; and if they do, Chloe will be able to turn them away. It remains a private residence, and well-guarded at that.

“Yeah, but if they _do?_” Hank asks.

“Then we’ll deal with them,” Nines says easily. “And then we’ll leave.”

“I have some contingencies in mind,” Chloe adds, but she offers nothing more than that.

Hank takes his departure just before dawn, mumbling about making it to work sometime before noon. He throws a final jab of, “_You_ owe me a new TV,” at Nines as the front door swings shut.

“You broke his TV?” Connor asks in his absence. Chloe looks likewise curious.

Nines pauses to consider.“…among a few other things.”

Chloe leads them through to a living area. There’s a sizeable seating area recessed into the floor. Most importantly, there’s a high-pile rug: Connor buries his toes in the thick tangle of fibers, and ultimately ignores the couches - soft calfskin - in favor of sitting on the floor.

After a moment’s consideration between them, Nines and Chloe join him there.

They share their stories three-fold over the interface.

There’s careful editing on all sides, Connor suspects; furtive things there-and-gone on his awareness. Something small - sun-warmed, silver and ornate - for Chloe. A brittle thing that Nines shies away from, the feeling of crunching glass beneath his soles.

Connor doesn’t let anything like that slip. He holds his memories to a carefully detached distance and shares everything.

(Nearly everything.)

Nines’ anger for Elijah redoubles as he sees the sessions play out in full. Connor feels some warm satisfaction, seeing Jude’s newfound fears after his untimely departure and Nines’ less than cordial waking.

When they’ve finished, they sit apart. Three deviants bound by a collision of fates.

>>_ You trust her_, Nines confirms.

>_ I do,_ Connor replies.

>> _Alright._

“I’ll see about finding the lieutenant a new TV,” Chloe says, passing Nines a musing smile.

They search for ways to pass the time. Chloe explains that she has a few projects to work on and largely leaves them be. Nines and Connor wander the house. They lay out firm plans on what CyberLife or the army might send, and how best to work around them.

They discuss where they’d go, but only in broad terms; Canada, possibly. Connor is confident they can secure a footing in the black market android trade there, ensure parts and thirium remain accessible. They briefly consider Europe, far flung and a place where androids are more of a trinket than a household item. 

They rest, in as much as they need to; quiet moments, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Connor ferries a blanket and pillow from the guest room to the living room, crafting a piecemeal recreation of what Hank provided him.

(The linens and couch are much more expensive, admittedly.)

Connor feels _disorganized_ \- his data hastily rummaged through again and again, left untidy. 

Errant cross-references, intrusive snippets of memory. Even awake, he feels like he’s shying away from his own thinking.

Pressing a hand to the glass and pulling it away just as hastily. Caught between the thought of a pale face snared, suspended, and the feeling of a thumb bearing hard into collarbone.

_Nothing like that, no._

Stasis would restore some order, tamp down the lingering errors, but even when he’s recreated Hank’s living room as best he can - settled down and emptied his mind - he finds he has little interest in stasis.

They stay inside that first week. Chloe’s surveillance is quite good, but the snow is still fresh, and they don’t want to imply any more activity around the Kamski mansion than usual.

They remain indoors. Connor teaches Chloe and Nines a card game he learned in a ramshackle bar in Tiksi. There’d been no windows and little lighting, but it’d been warm, and he’d tripled his money - stolen off the bouncer - before he’d been forced to return to his mission objectives.

Here, Chloe’s STs beat them both handily, even after Nines ensures the cameras are disabled.

The neatly folded blankets at the end of the couch begin to multiply, until they’ve constructed something like a nest. Card games migrate from the dining table to the living room, where they can pull the blankets up over themselves and create a rough circle on the floor. Nines gets much better at cheating, as does Connor.

Hank returns on Friday evening. He brings takeout food for himself - a stubborn dodge of any more involvement in clearing a dead man’s fridge - and a stack of movies, and asks if Kamski would stoop so low as to have an entertainment system. (He did.)

They watch three movies from the 20th century. Hank sleeps through the majority of them, although he does wake long enough to cackle at their mutual bafflement over a joke involving three seashells.

“It’s a non sequitur,” Connor explains.

Chloe insists, “There has to be _some _implication—”

Hank steadfastly refuses to explain further.

(Nines does offer to repair his drywall, at Connor’s prodding. Hank defers, and confirms that the record player survived; he also thanks Chloe for the new TV, although he insists he was only joking. “Thanks, though. The one you got is, uh— a lot better.”)

Connor catches Hank in a moment of wakefulness in the later hours, studying the pile of deviants on the floor, all firmly engrossed.

Catching Connor’s glance, Hank tilts an eyebrow and takes another sip of his drink.

On the following Tuesday, Hank brings Sumo. He’d cleared it with Chloe ahead of time, but he still apologizes profusely as the dog shakes a substantial amount of snow onto the foyer floor.

Sumo pauses after his shake, considers the androids waiting. After a few careful sniffs, he heads straight for Connor, tail wagging in a slow, easy tempo. Connor kneels to greet him, chasing his fingers down through the thick fur around his collar.

> _He likes me more,_ Connor informs Nines.

>> _He knows you have ham in your pocket, _Nines replies, giving Sumo a polite scratch behind the ears.

“We could go outside,” Connor announces before Hank can toe off his boots. It’s due to snow later, over six inches. More than enough to mask more than the usual footprints.

Hank sighs, dropping his heel back into the boots. He raises an eyebrow as Connor heads for the door. “You gonna put on shoes, or—”

“No,” Connor declares and walks past.

Sumo cuts a meandering path up to the treeline, weaving between Connor and Hank.

Hank watches Connor’s confident steps. “How is it?”

“Cold,” Connor answers. “But it’s interesting to feel how it compacts.” He finds he particularly likes that crunching, sliding feeling.

Hank studies him sidelong. He keeps walking, keeps breathing in steady exhales that light up with the thin moonlight. He asks: “You alright, kid?”

Connor’s first thought is, _Of course._

He’s here, he’s out; he’s feeling the snow nip at his ankles and he’s moving of his own volition.

But he’s fractured apart. Nines enters stasis roughly every 32 hours; Connor feigns the same schedule, but he doesn’t rest.

He burrows beneath the blankets and closes his eyes and—

Doesn’t.

Blinks away misplaced errors, laundry lists of components that he _knows _are connected, functioning, and bears his thumb hard into the scarred plating of his palm until they fade.

Hank asks, “You alright, kid?” out in the snow, and Connor answers, “Better than I’ve ever been.”

Hank breathes out a doubting sigh, but he doesn’t correct him. Only says, “Well, I thought the big idiot might cheer you up, anyway.”

Connor smiles as the St. Bernard comes galloping back. “Thank you, Hank.”

Nines catches up with them not long after, a spare set of shoes in hand.

Chloe convinces Hank to take a meal with them that evening. “It won’t be three androids watching you eat,” she explains calmly. “Sumo will be watching you, too.”

Hank rummages for a second plate and feeds half of his steak to Sumo. (Sumo finishes in seventeen seconds, and Hank is once again left with an audience of four, give or take a few shared-consciousness bodies.)

All three of Chloe’s bodies have joined them, something Nines doesn’t miss. >> _She must be finished._

> _Must be._

They’ve been forewarned, but Hank hasn’t. It makes sense to perform a test run with the lieutenant.

Chloe wisely clears the dishes (and cutlery) away first, replacing them with a glass of scotch.

Hank tilts the scotch up in the light, asking Connor whether he can tell brand or vintage from his sampling.

“If it was stored in the correct conditions, I could probably guess a year, certainly a brand.”

>> _I could tell both,_ Nines says.

> _Your spectrometry systems aren’t significantly different from my own._

>> _I could tell, _Nines insists smugly.

Connor glances Nines’ way, but he’s looking damnably straight-faced.

Hank tilts the scotch back and announces, “Yeah. Tastes expensive.”

“Very,” Elijah’s voice cuts in. To Hank’s credit, he’s not too alarmed; one ventriloquy trick had been enough to teach him that lesson.

But as Elijah Kamski slides a chair away from the table and takes a seat, Hank’s glass clinks hard against the tabletop.

“It’s Macallan,” Elijah continues, dropping his head aside in arrogant ease. “Single malt, 65 years in the making.”

Connor can see the tendons in Hank’s throat going taut. Even Sumo has picked up on his owner’s posture; the dog gives a low growl of warning, rising to his feet.

> _That’s enough, Chloe, _Connor warns.

Elijah’s posture shifts. The lazy tilt of his shoulders becomes precise and level; he folds his hands neatly on the tabletop, chin inclining down.

Chloe steps to stand by Elijah’s shoulder, resting a hand against the juncture of his throat. His skin sloughs away in blue-white iridescence, and Hank’s tension unravels into an irritated, “What the _fuck?_”

“I think this will solve our problem nicely,” Elijah says. The same voice, but measured out in Chloe’s standard, pleasant tone. Connor finds it nearly as unnerving as his hands, folded so neatly on the tabletop.

Connor looks away before anyone can take note of his stare.

“You just had one of these lying around?” Hank asks.

“In a way. This was a chassis we already had on hand,” Chloe explains through her new mouthpiece. A project Elijah lost taste for, was how she’d explained it to Connor. “I performed the modifications myself.”

“So what, anyone comes knocking, you roll out Mr. Stepford Wife here?”

“That’s the plan, yes,” Chloe says. “I think I make a passable impression. In a few years, he’ll die quietly of a chronic illness.”

“And all this goes to— who?” Hank waves a hand. “You going to mock up a fake identity so you can hold on to it?”

Chloe speaks through her original body with a cold confidence: “That won’t be necessary. By then, it will go directly to me.”

Hank weighs the implications there as he takes another drink. He regards Chloe, appraising. “You’re gonna keep busy, huh.”

“Very busy,” Chloe confirms.

Hank glances at Connor and Nines. “What about you two?”

“We’re still weighing our options,” Connor replies, and finds himself quietly pleased to say it. _We._

Chloe’s attention will return to him, now that they have the Elijah body on hand. He’ll have to return to the basement. Sit through more disassembly in the desperate search for more hours and days.

But after that - somewhere between the table and a late spring evening in 2040 - there’s a surprisingly pleasant nothing.

His plans are a little smaller than Chloe's fledgling ideas of a revolution. All he wants is to pick a direction and drive.

Him and Nines, heading for someplace with trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some [deviants in PJs](https://twitter.com/SkadizzleRoss/status/1230713293892767750?s=19) for you :D


	17. Possible, Probable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nines contemplates the present state of Connor.

**2038-12-13**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

He finds Connor where he should be: stretched across the couch under a blanket that’s gathered a distasteful amount of dog hair, eyes closed.

Late afternoon sunlight cuts through the room. Nines lingers for awhile, considering.

Considering Connor, expression pinched in a slight frown, but otherwise sunk into the absolute stillness of stasis.

And there’s Connor’s spider, hard at work on the coffee table: filigree legs rising and falling in quick thready flashes of sunlight as it straightens each pin on the barrel of Connor’s broken music box. The barrel has three sets of hair-thin pins, each waiting to pluck at the flexible metal comb and produce three unique songs.

That’s the goal, anyway. Currently, it plays a cacophony of muddled notes.

A pin snaps off with a small, brittle noise. The spider pauses in its work, looking palpably irritated.

Nines picks a pillow up off the end of the couch and settles by Connor’s feet, leaning back into the soft leather.

> _Did you rest at all?_ Nines asks.

Connor answers in suspiciously sharp silence over the line.

> _You think I can’t tell when you’re faking?_

Connor huffs irritably, lifting a foot to bear into Nines’ arm and shove him.

Nines pointedly doesn’t move. He wraps a hand around his ankle, sending a polite request for interface through the skin-to-skin contact. Connor accepts, but hesitates on the other side; a careful blank.

_When did you enter proper stasis last? _Nines asks.

_Three days ago, _Connor shoots back. _As you know._

_Chloe suspects you didn’t._

Connor huffs again, but offers little else across the interface.

_Is she wrong?_

More silence.

_You need it, Connor. Why have you been avoiding it?_

He expects more of the same, a gray fog of neutral calm; but he receives a tentative suggestion, instead.

The feel of a data cable at the port on the back of his neck, cold metal beneath his palms.

(And under the memory, Nines picks up more of Connor as he is now - the warmth of the sun on his shoulders, the scattered resistance of a system badly disordered; and discomfort like a constellation—)

Blackness like the sudden snap of a failing circuit, plunging them both into dark.

Connor pulls his leg away, breaking the interface. He buries his heels into the leather and sits up to regard Nines over the folds of the blanket. “I will.”

“Good,” he answers. “I’m not leaving until you do.”

Nines leans forward, dropping his fingertips against the smooth marble of the table. The spider perks up from its task and explores his fingers curiously, prodding at the synthskin. When he reveals some plastisteel, it presses an eager leg against the plating, white and blue mimicry spreading across its silver surface.

He hasn’t been able to override Connor’s control of the pauk, yet. Not for lack of trying, but Connor placed an embargo on any attempt to brute-force hack Pevek back in Svalbard - an excuse about fragile AI modifications that Nines now realizes was entirely fabricated.

Nines likes to think he’s formed some kind of truce with it, nonetheless. He allows the spider its whimsy, and it takes a general interest in his presence.

Nines lets the spider crawl into his palm, settling back into the couch again. Pevek paces the confines of his hand for awhile before skittering down his arm, up his shoulder and into his hair, using him as a vantage point to survey the room.

Connor watches, a teasing smile on his lips. He sends along an image: an ivory spider with veins of blue, grasping at the tufts of his hair.

“Hm.” Nines sends back an image of Connor, haloed in mussed hair; Connor scoffs, burying his face in the couch.

“I’ll be here when you wake,” Nines says.

“I know,” Connor murmurs.

This time, he does rest.

+++

>> _The autocab was a wise choice,_ Chloe says, leaning forward to peer out the window. >>_A limousine would've been rather out of place._

> _I still think it’s a risk, _Nines says, as they step out of the car. 

Connor answers with a dismissive, >> _It’s a quiet street._

Nines and Connor are in plainclothes; scarves and hats and jackets, bundled up warmer than they need to be against a mild December evening. It's early winter. Humans overreact to the cold, early on. 

Chloe wears the standard insignia. She stands behind them in the stiff pose of an outdated assistant, her hands folded neatly before her.

Most would recognize her as a classic, but no human would recognize her as the original. Even for the occasional android interaction, she’s borrowed a serial number from a retired ST in CyberLife’s databases.

“Well?” Connor asks, turning their way. “What do you think?”

Nines catalogs twenty cameras within the three-block strip of shops; the traffic cameras at intersections and security cameras focused on storefronts. All wireless. There's little foot traffic and less in the way of cars.

“Low security," Nines concludes."It’s a good choice.”

Connor frowns. “I like it because it’s _quaint._”

Nines supposes so. There’s lights strung up between the trees - maples, mostly, skeletal now. The strings of LEDs don’t cast much practical light, but they bring some warmth to the melting snow piled in the gutters. The storefronts are a mixture of antique and thrift stores; small, family-owned, cluttered. Racks of wares piled in the windows, fake candles flickering behind the flocking dusted on the windowsills.

“I suppose it is,” Nines says. He doesn’t quite understand the human need to decorate with faux snow _and _fire. One or the other seems enough.

“I like it,” Chloe declares. “Where should we go?”

Connor leads them to a thrift store. A string of bells jangles overhead as they enter.

> _I have the cameras, _Nines says, reducing all traces of themselves down to three vaguely generic pedestrians as they proceed. 

>> _I noticed._

Connor makes a point of greeting the elderly woman behind the counter before he tells Chloe, “See if you can find anything interesting.” Chloe accepts the mock order with a nod, drifting off into the aisle.

It’s tightly packed, racks of clothes butting up against bookcases piled with haphazard collections of scuffed leather shoes, tarnished silverware, old photographs printed on actual paper; Nines scans all of it rapidly and returns to watching the door and everything outside of the door. A police drone passes, too high to be of any concern. There’s an android waiting in stasis at the back of the store, surrounded by a clutter of piled boxes, bottles of polish and furniture finish. Nines thinks it must be tasked with sorting and cleaning new collections.

He’s interrupted by Connor stepping on his foot. It’s a calculated move, apparently; he’s shoving a sweater into his hands as soon as Nines looks down.

“For Chloe,” he says.

Nines takes the sweater carefully, running a thumb over the fabric. It’s a bright collision of blues, greens and reds in jagged knitted lines, interrupted by the occasional relatively tame black-and-white penguin.

“It’s terrible,” Nines concludes.

“That’s the point. They’re _supposed _to be ugly. It’s a tradition.”

“Then I suppose you’ve succeeded.”

“Good. Help me find two more for her.”

Nines follows him through the winding racks to the one wrapped in red-and-green lights, labeled _TACKY SWEATERS: 2 for $10._

Nines considers the bright, chaotic patterns gravely. “Do I get to choose yours?”

“That depends on how bad your tastes are,” Connor replies.

He selects one for Chloe featuring a moose, which she seems to favor out of the lieutenant’s sleepwear purchases. For Connor, he chooses one with a disconcertingly photorealistic goat wearing its own ugly sweater. He keeps his back turned to Connor while he studies the geometric chaos. Finding it suitably obnoxious, he rolls it up tightly.

Connor turns back to him with something clad in bells. “Oh, you found one.”

“For Chloe,” Nines says.

Connor points at the rolled-up sweater. “And that one?”

“For you,” Nines replies, keeping it tucked beneath his arm.

Connor considers him, expression calculating. “Alright.”

He ushers Nines away to observe Chloe’s selections while he conducts his own search. She has a few dresses draped over her arm; Nines offers to take them, but she ignores him.

>> _Best not_, she chides.

Ah. Right.

He redirects his attention to the racks. There’s a collection of gently used businesswear that catches his attention; he parses through the various fabrics and cuts of shirt and jacket, curious. 

Even here in Detroit, CyberLife had supplied him with casual clothing, something that wouldn’t look out of place in a variety of civilian environments. Back in Svalbard, their dress usually depended on their intended destination; either fatigues - if they were destined for a base or unpopulated region - or drab utilitarian clothing in keeping with the high Arctic towns they frequented.

They’d never had to wear the insignia, outside of when Nines had first arrived on base. He’s never seen Connor wear it at all.

>> _That one_, Chloe interrupts with only a skating glance his way. His hand’s paused over a charcoal button-up. >> _That would be a good fit for you._

> _Thank you._

He selects a few other dress shirts, some slacks. They won’t fit perfectly, but they’re in good condition.

He pauses longest over a dark red dress shirt, the fabric a synthetic silk that shines subtly in the light. He pulls the sleeves free, measuring. It should be a surprisingly good fit. Connor’s built more slender than he is in the shoulders.

He rolls that up beneath his arm, as well.

So decided, he settles back into the racks.

He watches the street from this shop’s security cameras, as well as the three adjacent; watches Connor, who’s moved on from the to study a bookshelf stacked floor to ceiling with hardcover books, small statuettes.

>> _Stop spying, _Connor sends without looking.

> _You first._

Chloe pays for their purchases, borrowing funds from one of Elijah’s many confidential accounts. The cashier asks, “Going to some kind of party?” as she folds the sweaters away.

“Yes,” Connor answers promptly.

Chloe waits until they’re back in the open air before she asks, “Are we?”

“Why not? I’ve never been to a party.”

“There was that festival in Daneborg,” Nines reminds.

“That’s different, I was working.”

“You had to empty your liquid reservoir three times.”

“And no one suspected.”

“They just thought you were a lightweight.”

“Have you always been like this?” Chloe interjects. “Bickering.”

“Connor informed me it was training,” Nines said dryly, and followed Connor’s sudden left turn into an antique store.

>> _What party will we be attending? _Chloe asks as she stops by the door, patiently idling with the bags in hand.

>> _Our own_, Connor says. >> _I’ll ask Hank if he’s free. We could try cooking. I’ve never cooked before._

> _Why cooking? _Nines asks. 

>> _It seems like it’d be enjoyable. Getting the proportions correct, transforming them into something else._

Nines isn’t entirely convinced. There’s no reason Connor wouldn’t succeed at following a recipe, particularly in a kitchen as state-of-the-art as Kamski’s. He suspects Connor might not be inclined to follow a recipe to the letter, however. > _Are we going to inform Hank that he’s your test subject?_

>> _I’ll make sure it’s edible, _Chloe interjects. >> _It’d be rude to poison our only guest._

+++

Nines thinks - he hopes - Connor is—

Happy, mostly. Content.

There’s moments in which he’s certain of it: the catch of breath in Connor’s throat as he took the red shirt from Nines’ hands. “Oh.” The rushed nod when Nines asked if it met his approval.

But there are others when he doubts.

Catches Connor’s in those long, lingering seconds of distraction, studying the wall of glass looking down on the river.

He knows Connor’s restless; he’s seen the quiet moments of tension, recognizes the old signs appearing again. Too long on base and he began to fidget more, calibrating with his stolen ruble. Organizing Jude’s haphazard inventory and disorganizing it again.

He was never built to be content with stagnancy.

But Nines has begun to wonder if there’s more to it than restlessness. He’d felt Connor’s discomfort for a moment, that day on the couch. The tug and pull of old damage, a prickling hurt settled close to his core.

He speaks to Chloe about it; she mentions vague improvements she’s liked to make, and admits Connor’s been avoiding the topic.

The evening Nines decides to approach the subject, he finds Connor where he expects. The late November snow has melted with the more temperate December weather. Connor goes down to the dock often in the evenings, sitting and watching the river.

He passes a quarter hand-to-hand, legs folded beneath him.

Nines watches as Connor completes the idle calibration and pocket the coin. Watches him bear his thumb into his palm, attention drifting out across the gray water.

Nines pauses a few planks back. He wants to say he’s noticed how Connor grips at his hand more and more, he wants to quote statistics; but he knows that will only allow Connor to slip away from the subject under the guise of mock irritation.

So he sits next to him and offers a hand instead, palm up.

Connor studies him in the gloaming, but his gaze is soft; distraction lingering. “It’s fine, Nines.”

“Can I see?” he asks - old, unerring patience, none of that has changed - and Connor relents. He takes his hand, and Nines catches the edge of a lingering diagnostic and a litany of errors.

Phantom warnings of disconnected components. Reverberations of a cacophony he recognizes.

Connor hides them away, redirects to the last gold pieces of sunset reflected in the water. The feel of the water bitingly cold against his feet, before he’d put his shoes back on and tucked his legs beneath him.

_Can I run a diagnostic? _Nines asks.

Connor hesitates.

But there’s a there-and-gone thought, an unspoken thing in the shape of _because it’s you._

<< external override // initiate self-diagnostic?: Y >>

MODEL RK800

SERIAL #313 248 317 -57  
BIOS 2.3 REVISION 0793  
SELF-DIAGNOSTIC 2038.12.17 17:02:43

AI ENGINE... OK  
CPU STATUS... OK  
MEMORY STATUS... OK  
BIOCOMPONENTS... OK  
CORE TEMPERATURE... 34.9°C  
THIRIUM VOLUME... 98%

ALL SYSTEMS OK

A list of biocomponents follows; all intact and functional, beyond the ones that have long been absent.

Connor is still a high-tension hum across the line, lingering anxieties.

_There are some additional repairs Chloe would like to make, _Connor explains reluctantly. _She’s been asking._

_She’s mentioned, _Nines replies.

Connor’s quiet, for a moment; a nervous edge sharpening his thoughts. _This is a coordinated attack, then._

_Well— collaborative, I would say, _Nines corrects gently._ I have a proposition._

_Yes?_

_There’s something I’d like to show you, after Chloe does her repairs. Or during, if you’d prefer—_

“No,”Connor interjects quickly, severing the line. “You don’t need to be there for that.”

“Alright. After. Do we have a deal?”

“A deal,” Connor agrees. He allows Nines to help him to his feet.

Hank arrives while Connor’s still downstairs; Nines finds himself grateful for the distraction. He explains that Connor and Chloe are working on a project. (He doesn’t explain that that project includes the replacement of what would roughly amount to the human kidney, or perhaps liver.)

Hank accepts the explanation easily enough, and the two of them settle at the coffee table for a game of gin rummy.

He allows Hank to win what he deems an acceptable amount of rounds. Hank actually surprises him with an unexpected victory, forcing him to beat him twice in a row to keep the scores properly competitive.

Somewhere in the patter of Hank’s complaints - the occasional guarded comment on his CyberLife rep still breathing down his neck, a back alley scuffle where he got kicked in the shins by a YK - he falls quiet, pensive.

When he speaks again, he’s uncharacteristically hesitant: “Not that it’s any of my business, and not that I have _any _idea how this shit works—”

He stalls out there, frowning down at his hand. (Nines isn’t sure why he’s bothering. He isn’t capable of playing any cards this turn, Nines palmed the last queen while he was cutting the deck.)

“Yes?” Nines prompts, eventually.

“You love him?”

When Nines stares at him a beat, Hank clarifies: “Connor, I mean.”

Nines considers. He’s aware of the concept, of course; but he hasn’t put any thought into it. Into how one separates platonic fondness from romantic interest, lust from love. A musing internet search only proves humans are exceptionally divided on the subject.

Deviancy brought everything that he’d neatly compartmentalized away crashing to the forefront of his awareness; he’s only now begun to properly catalog these things, and he’s barely begun on the tangled mess of emotions - sharp and bright in turns - surrounding Connor.

Ultimately, he concludes, “I’m not sure.”

Hank blinks. “What do you mean, you aren’t _sure?_”

“I’m rather new to—” Nines waves a hand vaguely. “Everything.”

The lieutenant funnels a sigh through his nose, likely filing this away as another android oddity. “Alright, well. That one you’ve gotta figure out for yourself, son.”

He supposes it’s possible. Maybe even probable. He suspects if he is, it’s something buried so deep into the roots of him that he can barely discern it anymore.

His feelings for Connor simply - are. A fundamental thing, humming on familiar frequencies.

Connor returns from the basement tired, distracted. He settles into the curve of Nines’ arm as Hank and Chloe argue lightly over suitable movies; they select something old, set somewhere older. There are a lot of bonnets involved, and horse-drawn carriages. Hank falls asleep after seventeen minutes.

Connor’s hand finds his wrist beneath the blanket. _So what was it you wanted to show me?_

Nines asks him to open the sanctuary, and follows him there.

He hopes it works. He’s had to build it in his own jerry-rigged construct, but after a fair amount of testing, he thinks he’s resolved most of the stranger loops and glitches.

Connor stands on the shore, already looking the better here under the strange light of a midnight sun. The sanctuary is in full summer bloom, the waters calm.

“So?” he asks, hands buried in the pockets of a long coat he'd favored for Russian missions.

Nines stalks the hillside, considering carefully where to place it. He ultimately selects a patch of campion, a low, creeping flower spilling across a rocky ledge. Connor’s program accommodates the code easily, Connor’s curiosity a palpable thing.

Nines’ construct toddles out of the high grass, settling a cautious forepaw on the patch of flowers. It’s a ground squirrel, its stub of tail raised in a cautious flag as it surveys the shoreline.

Satisfied, the rodent falls back on its haunches. It’s plump for winter, modeled after one Nines saw in late summer.

“You built this?”

“It took awhile to get the motions right,” Nines says, feeling a warm flush of unexpected embarrassment.

Connor’s face breaks open in delight. He steps forward, and the squirrel rises back onto its haunches, giving a warning _tsk._

“It’s _wonderful._”

“I thought we could continue adding to this place,” Nines says, words coming more easily. “I have a few ideas, actually. If you don’t mind a collaborator.”

“No, of course.” Connor kneels by the ledge, plucking a small sprig of willow to offer. The squirrel snatches it in a quick motion, stuffing it between its teeth and scurrying off into the cotton grass.

He passes Nines a smile, and Nines feels everything brighten with it.

_Possible_, he thinks again.

_Probable._

And he suspects it’s always been.


	18. 2039

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unusual Christmas, and a deviant New Year.

**2038-12-24**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

“Come on, Hank, you’ve gotta be shitting me.”

“You want something from me, try a ‘Lieutenant’ once in awhile.”

Reed scoffs again. “Seriously, _Lieutenant_, what the fuck do you have to do on Christmas?”

Ben gives the back of Reed's head a look bordering on uncharitable. Hank's not blind to the implication there - hell, he's got a running record for most holidays on duty, as a lieutenant - but this particular evening, he's willing to meet it with a shit-eating grin. “If you must know, I’m gonna be sitting at my house. Off duty. Listening to Bing Crosby and thinkin’ about you, here, twiddling your goddamn thumbs. It’s gonna be my best Christmas in years. Now would you please get the fuck away from my desk?”

Reed falls back a step, arms spread wide in a sprawling gesture of ‘_Well fuck me, then_.’ Hank keeps hoping he’ll grow out of that New Yorker bullshit, but no such luck. He gives Reed a bland unimpressed stare and turns back to the report he’s been typing line by painstaking line for the last three hours.

If he sends Hank a stylistic finger over his shoulder as he walks away, well. Hank chooses to ignore it. Disciplinary files take paperwork, and Hank’s one summary statement away from stepping out of this station for a solid seventy-two hours.

He throws the receptionist a vague wave and a ‘Happy Holidays’ in passing. She smiles placidly and responds in kind, an easy programmed response.

Work in progress.

He spends the majority of Christmas Eve on that greatest American tradition: standing in stores, staring at shelves, and regretting putting this off until the last goddamn minute.

Scratching his beard, he meanders from Home Goods to Clothing and back, debating whether he’s supposed to buy the one gift in triplicate, or three separate things? Chloe’s bodies trade their clothes around, but they don’t do that creepy Shining identical-dress thing anymore, so it’s all kind of muddled…

It’s all more complicated than he anticipated. He thinks Nines is gonna be the hardest to find something for, but it’s actually Connor’s gift that he ends up finding last, tucked on the back shelf of a thrift store.

(It's all a welcome distraction, too, but there's a thought he's not meeting head-on.)

The rest of the evening goes to a haphazard attempt at wrapping, which he’s always been a disaster at. Not so much of a problem with a 5-year-old, but-- well. It ends up… alright. About a 40/60 ratio of scotch tape to actual wrapping paper. He figures he can give the androids some entertainment, at the very least.

The morning of, he grabs the bag of presents and a couple movies off the shelf. Tucks a bow onto Sumo’s collar on a whim. Doesn’t bother leashing him; Sumo’s waiting patiently by the car door by the time Hank’s slipping and sliding his way down the sidewalk he hasn’t bothered to de-ice, yet. Sumo rests his chin on the back of Hank’s headrest for most of the ride, panting the charming scent of his breakfast over Hank’s shoulder.

Sumo’s trotting his way up the path to the house while Hank’s still digging the presents and a bag of Chinese takeout from the trunk. The dog knows the way pretty well by now, and Chloe’s already waiting out front, hands folded in front of a technicolor tacky sweater. He’s a fluff of tail disappearing through the door while Hank pauses, gesturing to the felted penguins and dim glow of LED snowflakes on Chloe’s sweater. “That Connor’s doing?”

Chloe smiles, pulling the hem away to examine her own ensemble. It’s funny, considering - if Hank understands her right - she can see this scene through every camera in the vicinity. “How did you know?”

“He’s got good taste.”

“As do you.” She indicates his own sweater, which isn’t exactly subtle. A stylized Santa hat, and the faux cross-stitched pronouncement of: _NOW I’VE GOT A MACHINE GUN, HO HO HO._

_“_A reference to the 1988 film _Die Hard_,” Chloe surmises.

“Yeah, have you seen it?”

“I suspect I will soon.”

“Now you’re catchin’ on.”

It actually smells like _cookies_, which is at odds with the ambiance of Kamski’s face in neo-classical portraiture style taking up half the foyer. Chloe would redecorate if she could, of course, but the only ones aware of the new, tenuous position of Elijah Kamski’s estate are the people standing in his house.

He takes a hard left, away from blood-red pools and long, meandering corridors to hell and towards the living quarters end of the house. 

Sumo’s left a declining trail of melting snow clumps that eventually ends in the kitchen, cookie-smell epicenter. The dog himself is a mop of fur on the floor, completely succumbed. Connor’s chasing his fingers down Sumo’s chest, drumming a distinct rhythm out of the useless lump’s rear left leg.

Nines leans back against the counter, watching the dog - watching Connor - with an expression Hank would’ve classified as ‘austere, bordering on comatose’ on a human. On Nines, Hank’s coming to understand it as ‘quietly fond.’

“Hello, Hank,” Connor says, more to the drooling dog than Hank proper.

“Hey.” He almost hands the Chinese food to Nines first, but swaps at the last second, offering the presents instead. “Merry Christmas.” Nines takes the offered bag, looking a little perplexed.

“Presents,” Hank clarifies. “Except the movies. Those are on loan.”

Nines raises his eyebrows, before a Chloe scoops the bag out of his hands and ferries it off— somewhere.

Now that he’s standing here, it’s not just cookies - there’s actually the evidence of a proper meal strewn around the kitchen. Another of Chloe’s many faces bustles between the granite bar and the dining room proper, ferrying plates and things. Hank sees the edge of an _entire Christmas ham _and squints. An actual, entire _ham._ Hank stares after it, flabbergasted. “It’s just me, right?”

“Just you,” Connor says cheerily, brushing his hands on his apron as he rises to his feet. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised. How much did you make?”

“Not that much,” Chloe interjects cheerfully, plucking the remaining bag out of Hank’s hand. “What did you bring?”

“Chow mein. Kind of a tradition. You didn’t have to--”

Chloe offers a pristine smile. She withholds any commentary on how it was going to go bad either way.

Hank grimaces nonetheless.

Connor’s still looking absolutely pleased with himself. “You get to guess.”

“Guess what?”

“Who made what.”

“Oh, no. No, no, I’m not picking favorites or whatever, any one of you three could have me in a shallow grave by kickoff.”

Nines offers, “Don’t worry. We already know who’s your favorite, Hank.”

Hank gives him a dry look while Connor finds a sudden interest in chasing oatmeal raisin cookies off of a sheet pan. Nines offers absolutely nothing in return, of course. (He’s right, though. Smug prick.)

Chloe has the good grace to serve Connor and Nines a couple fingers of scotch each. 

Her three bodies take their seats around the spot where Elijah Kamski had laid out Connor’s heart in all its various components. 

It makes him feel a little less bad about resting his elbows on a dead man’s table, thinking about those deft fingers - digging blindly and ruthlessly.

_Tell me how you think that would go, Lieutenant_.

It would go like this:

Those idiots at CyberLife send one android to destroy another, because it’s worked so well before (that metallic pop of the dumpster banging back into shape as Connor slumped to the ground—), and the android in question has an existential breakdown in Hank’s living room, because it turns out, CyberLife never learned a goddamn thing about the androids it made.

How they worked. How they _lived._

How they came to life.

Exhibit A’s sitting to his left. Lifting the scotch to his lips and turning his head aside, that tilt that usually means he’s speaking to Connor over wireless. The one who’d waved a hand in a gesture a bit too awkwardly crisp to be vague, explaining, ‘_I’m rather new to-- everything._’

But not quite denying that there might be some kind of mutual something between him and Connor.

Exhibit B, currently engaged in sneaking bits of ham under the table. Who’d curled up on Hank’s living room floor with his hands sunk into Sumo’s fur like the weight of the dog’s head on his shoulder was the only kind touch he’d ever felt in his life. Curled up with his face buried, away from the raw reality playing out on Hank’s television screen. (The television Nines had busted into a bleeding OLED mess, two weeks later.)

Exhibit C, plucking at three sets of napkins with three sets of fingers.

She’d stepped aside for Nines, as he’d moved towards Kamski’s lab with a determination edged in red hate. All that steeled rage that dwindled down to nothing more than the flat shock of a grieving kid, when Connor had moved on the table.

Here’s how he thinks it’d go: Kamski’s arrogance, CyberLife’s arrogance. It all gets steamrolled by two idiots that found something in one another, something more than wiring and circuitry.

They woke up. They woke up, and they fought for one another, and Kamski lost, in the end. Found what he was looking for, sure. And paid for it.

That was one man. And all this was the work of three of his millions of creations.

CyberLife doesn’t stand a fucking chance.

Hank folds the existential musings aside and guesses wrong on all counts, in terms of cooks. It turns out the ham - which was buried in some kind of fancy bourbon-something glaze - is Nines’ doing, even though Hank pins it on Chloe. The cherry pie is Nines’, as well, a perfectly flaky crust, rich filling, and a meticulous lattice top. Connor was behind a vague vegetable casserole with a generous dusting of paprika. Chloe attempted to cover for the casserole with some sauteed something or other, broccoli rabe-something that’s festive and bright and surprisingly good, considering a complete lack of salt or butter.

Hank declares his favorite to be the chow mein: Corktown’s finest. He gets a chorus of sighs and grumbles from the girl(s) and Connor. Nines just gives him that austere smile of his, and Hank has to take it as some kind of approval. Not that he has much of a need for a 1-month-old’s approval.

(The pie was the best. He tells no one this, but he suspects with the thousands of dollars of analyzers present in the room - it’s not much of a mystery.)

Out in the living room, Chloe’s arranged the presents tastefully. Pin-perfect brown wrapping on most of them - and then there’s Hank’s.

Connor turns the particular crooked arrangement addressed to him over in his hands, looking wryly amused.

“Technically it’s for Pevek,” Hank says.

“Oh. I should let him open it, then,” Connor says gravely.

Hank _really _wishes he wouldn’t, but— it’s a little late. The spider’s pouncing out of Connor’s pocket and slicing its way through the scotch tape with a disturbing efficiency, baring the little box underneath. It’s an old tobacco tin, etched gold with a bright blue enamel inlay. The spider picks up the colors in little streaks as it pokes around the box and finally taps the little catch. The tin pops open and the spider crowds its many legs inside, hunkering down.

“Much more spacious,” Hank says. _And secure, _he thinks.

Connor thanks him, slipping Pevek’s new abode back into his pocket.

The second part, Hank’s a little more sheepish about. “I know it’s a little bigger than the one you use, but—” He shrugs, dropping the rest of his half-assed explanation.

It’s an old silver dollar, Liberty draped in all her vestments on the front, an eagle on the back. A little worn on the edges, but it still shines under Connor’s thumb as he picks it up.

“Still useful?”

“Workable,” Connor says, sending the coin through a dizzying series of flips and snaps before letting it slam to a sudden stop between his fingers.

“Wise-ass,” Hank mutters.

Connor smiles with an easy sincerity. “Thank you, Hank.”

Hank doesn’t have much to say to that. Just a mumbled, “Yeah, sure” and a half-shrug as he reaches for his drink.

Nines is giving him a look that says, _See? Favorite. _Hank doesn’t dignify that with a response, either.

Chloe and Nines banded together for Connor’s gift: an old Polaroid camera, the kind that spits out a square of film with every shot, sepia tones resolving slowly to a color image.

“Haven’t seen one of those in a couple decades,” Hank says.

“It was Nines’ idea,” Chloe explains. “It took some time to find a source for the film. I had to buy in bulk, actually. Should last you awhile.”

Hank expects the camera to get turned his way first, and inevitably it does. He’s prepared with a dapper tip of his whiskey glass.

Connor frowns at the square of bleached paper. Hank snags it, giving it an expert shake. “It’ll take a second.”

Connor and Chloe crowd around the film. Connor frowns. “It’s dark.”

“And out of focus,” Chloe notes.

“Yeah, they do a better job in daylight. You’ll get the hang of it.”

They gather a nice stack of weird-smelling Polaroids by the end of the night: Nines studying his new pocketknife, which probably couldn’t cut butter at this point; a crooked shot of Sumo crushing Connor against the couch; Chloe lining her tacky new duds up alongside Connor’s spectacularly tasteless addition to Hank’s wardrobe.

The four of them and the dog, draped in tinsel and crammed together on a couch that probably costs more than Hank’s mortgage.

They watch movies, talk about the slow and steady increase in casework for the DPD’s one-man deviant crimes department. There’s something building up, Hank suspects. A critical mass, waiting for some tipping point. What that’s going to be, Hank doesn’t know.

Maybe a petite RT, smiling to herself and nodding along as Hank announces, “2039’s going to be a hell of a year.”

“Connor’s going to introduce me to Jericho,” Chloe says.

“They’ll appreciate the help, I’m sure,” Connor agrees. “Especially with more and more androids coming their way.”

“Sounds like you’ve got other plans,” Hank says, gesturing towards the RKs’ gifts - a pair of eel skin wallets.

“We thought we might travel a bit,” Connor says.

“Hey, you can head for the ocean,” Hank says. “One that’s _warm. _None of that iceberg shit.”

Connor smiles. “I’ll add that to the itinerary. What about you, Hank?”

“I’ll do what I can. Punt whoever I can your way, keep pissing off my CyberLife reps.”

“You’re exceptionally good at it,” Chloe agrees. God knows what internal memos those spying eyes have seen.

For the last few weeks, Hank has had front-row seats to these three learning their own languages. Some uneasy alliance forming up into the easy silences and casual comfort of something like family.

Everything’s going to change, soon. Of that, he’s sure, even as it leaves an anxiety twisting in his gut. Even as he almost wants to tell them all to stay here. Stay hidden, stay safe.

This kind of thing never lasts.

They get to live, now. Figure out for themselves what they’ll fight for. They sure as hell don’t need _his_ protection.

Chloe’s got her eyes on the world, by the sounds of it; and the RKs, well— Connor’s done his fighting. He’s got his spoils, too, leaning up against his shoulder, looking his stoic brand of serene.

They’ll watch out for each other, and Hank— Hank will do what he can.

It’s some kind of resolution, he supposes.

Better than nothing.

He enjoys their company for however long it'll last. Tips back his drink and thinks, _Tell me how you think that would go._

Hank can’t begin to guess.

+++

**2038-12-29**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

The RKs are nervous.

Chloe doubts either would quantify it as such, but she amuses herself in cataloging the differences as she follows them down into the _Jericho._

Where Connor fidgets restlessly when he pauses to scan ahead, Nines keeps a careful distance back, sunk well into a cold focus: checking and double-checking the corridors behind, keeping himself between them and any corridors he hasn’t had a chance to search in full.

Nervous. Both of them.

Nines only breaks his terse silence to comment, >> _This is a tactical nightmare. We could be cornered at any moment._

> _We won’t be. And it serves its purpose_, Connor argues, even though he’d thought much the same when he’d first seen this place.

It is uncomfortable, she’ll admit. There’s nothing for her to see through, here; a barren metal husk, no surveillance, not even any open android frequencies that she can detect. The spider skittering through the doorway ahead communicates with Connor alone, and whatever it has to say makes him frown. 

Up on the top deck, Chloe’s second body kneels beside the massive spool of a mooring line, watching the pier and the night sky. Her original body waits patiently at home, idling by the river view. It’s the third that she wears here, the first deviant to roll off a CyberLife assembly line. She thought it a fitting choice.

Connor moves ahead into a larger hold area. There are a few crates and pallets remaining. Scattered oil barrels have been upturned, but the fires have gone dark. Chloe runs a finger through the greasy soot clinging to them, wipes her hands clean on her slacks.

When Connor had first walked through here, the ground had glittered with discarded LEDs. It’s been swept clean.

>> _There’s thirium,_ Nines comments. Long-dried, but the RKs are able to see it. Connor catches Chloe’s curious look and forwards an image. Streaks and smears of it, here and there.

> _Scrubbed,_ Chloe says. 

>> _There’s an android here,_ Nines interjects sharply.

Connor moves ahead of Chloe, a protective half-step. But the android pauses at an equally wary distance, hands loose by her sides. Her focus narrows on Connor.

>> _Deviant,_ Connor sends to them both. Aloud, he asks, “Have you decided on a name?”

“Echo,” the WR400 replies. The hair curling from beneath her hoodie remains a bright blue.

“Did something happen?” Connor asks.

“You did.” She takes a hesitant half-step forward, but pauses as she catches sight of Nines, standing well back. “We showed the others when we arrived. We brought North back to the club, but you were gone. CyberLife was there. They were scrubbing thirium off the sidewalk. North and the others, they thought we should leave this place. In case you’d been— in case they found out about this place.”

Connor doesn't reply. He betrays nothing in the neutral line of his shoulders.

The WR400 continues on. “We still keep watch, in case anyone follows the old route. That way we can lead them on. Are these—?”

“This is Chloe and Nines,” Connor introduces, stepping aside to gesture. “I was hoping to introduce them to Jericho.”

Echo nods briskly. “We’ll take you, then.”

The second WR400 joins them on the lower decks as they wind their way back down to the pier. She quietly introduces herself as Ripple.

She thanks Connor, which he accepts with a nod. He seems uncertain of how else to respond.

While Echo has since found another jacket, her partner still wears the one Connor had given her in the back alley. She studies Nines with furtive sideways glances, but seems satisfied with Connor’s vouching.

The girls’ fingers twine briefly in the dark. They lead them on.

Chloe walks between, for the most part.

She leaves her second body on the old freighter. No sense in further complicating matters. She watches from above as the WRs lead her on, the RKs trailing behind.

Connor and Nines speak between themselves. Connor catches Nines’ wrist, sending something briefly over interface. A reminder of the events at the Eden Club, or perhaps a clarification of things he’d glossed over previously.

She catches the flash of anger on Nines’ face, before Connor’s quickly pulling his hand away.

Nines is the one to reach out, a second time. Expression carefully schooled as he brushes his wrist, a reassurance that has Connor glancing sideways at him, his tension easing.

_When will you tell him? _she’d asked at the conclusion of their last repairs. 

Chloe had bought what time she could with the old body. She’d keep looking, tweaking and optimizing what she could; but most of the remaining problems were centralized to the integral components, the core itself. She suspected nothing short of a transfer to a new core would prevent his eventual shutdown.

_We have sixteen months to prepare for that, _Connor reminded, following her thoughts.

_And Nines? He deserves time to prepare, as well. When will you tell him, Connor?_

He swung his legs off the table and hesitated there, bare feet hanging in the air. _Do you want a time and place?_

_Yes._

_I don’t know, _he replied tersely.

_Today would suffice, _Chloe argued. She didn’t remind him that this would hurt Nines; that he would resent this big of a lie, where he thought there was only honesty.

She suspected Connor knew, as much as he refused to acknowledge it.

Connor spoke slow and ruminative across the line. _If I tell him— that’s all he’ll think about._

His mind was a careful blank, but there were things stirring.

Low things, weighing heavy on the tongue.

_I will tell him,_ Connor confirmed, and tugged the data cable free.

They follow a meandering path east, moving closer to the river proper. They crawl beneath a boarded basement window, dropping down to a packed dirt floor covered with loose boards warped and gray with age. The building dates back centuries, although it hasn’t had a proper owner since 1972.

Chloe peruses the property holdings as she waits. Currently held in trust to a floundering estate.

Echo shifts some boards aside, revealing a rough-hewn shaft lined in stone. They descend into the dark on iron rungs, pebbled with moisture beneath her palms.

Below is a clay tunnel, shored up with wooden bulwarks and haphazard stacks of stone. An ancient tunnel that - at a touch of Echo’s hand - lights up with the pale blue of modern lighting, leading down a good hundred feet before splitting off into different directions.

>> _Another rabbit warren,_ Nines grumbles.

> _It’s quite rustic, isn’t it?_ Chloe enthuses, reaching out to brush at a string of abandoned LED components suspended from one of the beams. Some of the small rings still cling to their original glow.

>> _I’m glad you like it, _Connor says. His tone is genuine, but he looks equally distrustful of the low ceiling.

The WR400s lead them to the right, past several chambers carved into the earth and rock, stacked high with crates. The occasional android crouches among the inventory, taking stock.

They encounter Josh, next. The PJ comes to a half-halt, ducking beneath a particularly low beam; stares at Connor, stares at Nines, and deadpans, “Hey.”

He ducks his way underneath the beam, unfolding to about 3/4s of his full height; the RKs are ducking low as well, making the entire exchange - “Connor, you’re okay! It’s good to see you—” and “I’m alright, thank you,” and vague introductions - quite awkward on both sides.

Chloe stands at a comfortable full height, accepting Josh’s introduction with a nod. 

Echo and Ripple fall back, as Josh leads them on. Connor doubles back to them for some brief unspoken exchange, hesitating briefly before taking the hand Ripple offers.

He still looks quietly baffled as he turns back Chloe’s way. There’s a small charm in his palm, copper wire twined together into a loose mimicry of the symbol hidden in the murals of Ferndale. He tucks it carefully into his pocket, gaze distant.

> _Are you so unfamiliar with gratitude?_ Chloe teases.

>> _I think I am, _Connor replies, smiling quietly in the dim.

North introduces herself by shoving Connor into a wall.

Dried clay tumbles down around his shoulders while Nines jolts forward, but Chloe catches his wrist, brings him to hesitation long enough for the WR to speak.

And speak she does, in a flurry of frustration: “You don’t call, you don’t write. I thought you were _dead, _you stupid asshole, or _worse—_”

> _This is more what I’m used to, _Connor comments wryly, brushing the dirt from his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he says aloud. “I should’ve reached out to you. I was occupied.”

“It better have been fucking _good._”

“To be honest, I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“Of course we fucking _noticed,_ Connor. That mess, and then nothing from you? No more deviants sent our way for _months--_ What happened?”

“Connor was severely damaged by another android at the Eden Club,” Chloe interjects smoothly. “Mr. Kamski was happy to repair him, but it took quite some time.”

“What about big guy, here?”

“Nines,” Connor says. “He’s with me.”

North’s eyebrows go up, but she doesn’t comment past that. Nines seems content to study North carefully, puzzling out her particular brand of affectionate concern.

The small chamber North leads them into has been organized as what could pass for an office: untidy stacks of crates, a table scattered with small tidy sketches of the Jericho symbols tacked to a heavily annotated map. Simon slips into the doorway, watching them with guarded curiosity.

North turns on Chloe, next. “And what’s this about Kamski?_ That_ Kamski?”

Simon’s expression shifts. Something dark there, held close. He’d known the last deviant to come to Elijah before Connor. He knows who she’d gone to seek help from.

Chloe wishes she could apologize. Explain. Maybe someday she will be able to, but for now, these secrets can’t be wasted on comfort.

“Yes,” she replies.

“Holy shit,” North says, finally looking at her in full. “You’re—”

“The original,” Chloe explains. “Although this body isn’t my first.”

“Look at that, Simon,” Josh says. “Someone finally older than you.”

When Simon says nothing - only a discomfited half-smile - Connor cuts in. “Chloe would like to help you.”

“And your benevolent overlord’s alright with that?” North asks.

“Elijah and I have come to an agreement,” Chloe says casually.

“Fuck that,” North snaps. “Are you with him or with us?”

She’s sharp and sudden, like a bite of acid on the skin; but not _unpleasant_ for it. She burns and snaps, a restless fire that Chloe’s been curious about ever since Connor’s first memories. And now she’s here, a vibrant thing close enough to touch, and Chloe finds herself more fascinated still.

“My interests are my own,” she explains, mindful of keeping her hands by her sides, not folded before her. “And I act of my own accord. But I think you’ll find Mr. Kamski’s resources of use, occasionally. The building we entered by, for instance—”

She steps towards the map, indicating the small dot with a finger. Simon and Josh draw closer, curious.

“That property has been acquired by a private holding within the past fifteen minutes, pending a digital notary and some other paperwork. I can promise you it will stay unoccupied. If you show me where your other key exit points are, I could secure them, as well. And should you need more space, Connor can confirm that Mr. Kamski has quite a few discreet real estate ventures scattered throughout the city. They won’t be traced back to each other or the Kamski estate.”

“They’re well-hidden,” Connor agrees. “It took me days to sort through them all, and I knew what I was looking for.”

“There’s dozens you didn’t find,” Chloe says, earning a frown from Connor.

“We’ve got space,” Josh says. “What we need are supplies.”

Chloe nods. “Supplies are something I’ve also considered. I know the CyberLife supply lines, key transportation routes throughout the country. As for space, well-- how much has Jericho grown in the past two months?”

“It’s tripled,” Simon admits quietly.

“Deviancy is picking up speed,” North says. “The public will notice, eventually.”

“We could use some more efficient ways over the border, too,” Josh explains. “We have a few folks helping us out, but we could improve things.”

“I have ideas,” Chloe says demurely. The three of them measure her up, with degrees of wariness and surprise. All perfectly expected.

North tsks dismissively. She rounds on Connor, who’s gotten away with folding to the back of the room, Nines at his elbow. “What about you?”

“We’ll only bring the wrong kind of attention. We’re leaving the city for now. Of course, if you need our kind of help—” He glances towards Simon and Josh, hesitating. “Well, Chloe will know where to find us. But until then, we’ll lay low.”

“Thank you, Connor. You find anyone else, send them our way,” Josh says. He glances towards Chloe again. He tries on something like familiarity, a hesitant offering of acceptance. “I get the feeling our resource problem just got a little easier.”

North shoots Josh a sharp look. “I don’t want handouts from the asshole that started all this.”

“Would it help if I informed you Elijah isn’t aware of his money’s involvement in this?”

North pauses, considers.

Behind her shoulder, Connor smiles approvingly.

For North’s part, she only waves a hand briskly. “Alright. Fine. She can stay.”

Josh scoffs. “Now that we have your _blessing—_”

“Show me what you have,” Chloe says, pulling a crate close enough to sit.

She informs Connor that this body will remain here. There’s plenty of work to begin.

She listens to Simon’s careful explanations - appreciative of his quiet competence, born of many years’ experience - but she doesn’t miss it when North slips away; doesn’t miss the blush darkening Connor’s cheeks when the WR400 gestures at Nines and announces, “So this is it, huh?”

_That thing you were looking for._

Connor sputters, and that seems to be answer enough.

Chloe is still looking, but she suspects she’s growing closer.

And if she occasionally finds herself suddenly detached from the empty corridors of the mansion, from the crunch of asphalt beneath her sneakers in a Ferndale shipyard - all of her focus narrowed to the fond twist of North’s mouth as she asks Nines what he’s doing hanging out with a stubborn brat like Connor--

Well.

She is determined to resolve that, as well.

+++

**2039-01-01**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

They sit on the dock under a fresh snowfall, watching the morning mist rise on the dark current of the river.

“So,” Connor announces, his exhales carried south with the current. “Where would you like to go?”

“I was hoping you might have some ideas,” Nines admits.

He catches Connor staring - wide eyes and the dusting of snow catching on dark lashes for a moment, two, before his expression resolves down to an easy smile. The RK800 looks back out at the river, frowning in a mimicry of thought. “Maybe somewhere green, to start.”

“I’ve heard a lot of good things about ‘green,’” Nines agrees.

“We’ll need to find some transportation.”

“IDs, as well,” Nines says as he helps Connor up. "Maybe even some shoes."

“Maybe,” Connor replies, decidedly non-committal. He scuffs the dock beneath his feet, leaving a damp impression of his toes.

They head for shore together. They'll disappear this way: fading, forgotten, into the snow. No missions, no masters, no quarry to pursue.

The world to themselves, shrouded in gray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feast your eyes upon some absolutely _gorgeous_ art of the boys in Connor's garden over [here](https://nirelaz.tumblr.com/post/614065379713662976/happy-rare-pairs-week-with-dbhrarepairs)!


	19. Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor and Nines hit the road.

“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”  
\--_Slaughterhouse-5_ by Kurt Vonnegut

**2039-01-04**  
**__**_Brookville, Indiana_

>> _That’s it? _Nines asks, disbelief coloring his voice.

> _That’s it, _Connor confirms.

Nines makes a small noise of displeasure. >> _Domestic security continues to disappoint._

The sole security of this establishment is an outdated home surveillance camera tacked to a golfing VR rig. A bright red recording light blinks to draw the attention of would-be vandals, with a laminated card beneath reading ‘_SMILE FOR CCTV.’_

It isn’t even closed-circuit. Connor disables the camera wirelessly, leaving the red light to its pointless cycling.

They turn back to the subject at hand: pool tables laid out in neat rows, stretching the length of the dimly-lit hall.

>> _And you’re certain that you know this game well enough? _Nines asks.

> _After some observation. And some practice._

Connor pays for an hour of table-time, two pool cues, and two beers in cash. Despite his best attempts at fresh-faced innocence, the bartender doesn’t bother to card him, which is a disappointment. Connor’s been looking forward to using his new ID.

They procured the IDs from an Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles facility at three in the morning. Connor designed Nines’ license, providing a name - Nicholas Powell - and a birthdate, 10-25-2011. They were brothers from Winthrop Harbor, Illinois.

In what Connor thought to be a magnanimous gesture, Nines offered to return the gesture. It was only as Nines handed him the new ID that he realized he’d put Connor Powell’s birthday - 08-29-2013 - as two years _later _than his own. 

Connor attempted to reach the machine again, but Nines bodily restrained him. >> _It's already in the system. No sense in disrupting things now, Connor, it will look suspicious._

Connor rebutted, > _I'm twice your age._

Which led to a furious exchange while Nines dragged him to the door:

>> _No one's going to believe you're older than me._

> _If we're going by deviation, I'm_ _**three times**_ _your age._

>> _It's not about activation date--_

> _Or deviation date._

>> _It's about gravitas._

> _I resent that._

The age stuck. And no one bothers to ask for the ID, anyway. Disappointing. 

Nines waits by their selected table. He takes the offered beer, tilting it in the light to watch the carbonation. “What is this?”

“A lager,” Connor says.

“Hm.” He sips enough to be convincing.

> _It seemed the least likely to clog anything_, Connor continues over wireless.

>> _You should’ve gotten a whiskey._

> _No one else is drinking whiskey._

Nines takes another speculative sip. >> _I’d have to drink at least four of these before I can plausibly activate the inebriation protocol._

> _You can be terrible at pool sober, _Connor answers cheerily and begins arranging the triangle of balls on the felt.

They play together for awhile, working through their beers, engaging in small talk to allow their new identities to settle. Connor talks more - a fast and easy patter - and pays little attention to the game at hand, forcing Nines to repeatedly remind him that it’s his turn.

Nines adopts an unsurprisingly grave demeanor, spending most of his time studying the table in puzzlement, no doubt trying to work out how his distractible younger brother is still winning. 

> _Playing to your strengths, _Connor notes.

>> _As are you, _Nines says. Connor smiles up at him over his templed fingers and whiffs a shot terribly, hopping the cueball clean over the 3-ball he’d been aiming for and sending it sailing into a corner pocket.

Precisely as he’d preconstructed.

It takes Nines an admirable six tries to get the eight-ball in, but he amuses himself with outlining his carefully crafted bad shots wirelessly to Connor. He grows closer to the mark each time, as he calibrates the inaccuracies of the house cue - cheap and warped - and the idiosyncrasies of the table itself.

They came here with a goal, but Connor finds he’s content with this for now: leaning a hip against the table and considering the trajectories, letting a small sip of beer linger on his tongue, pockets of carbonation sparking. 

He’s aware that Nines’ attention is narrowed on him, as it nearly always is, and if he allows the first stage of the inebriation protocols to warm his cheeks slightly, well--

It’s nothing.

For their third game, Connor places a bet. He ensures that a few curious observers from the neighboring table see as he pins the $50 bill beneath a square of chalk. The gaggle of locals gathered there watched their previous game with amusement, drawn by the drag of Connor’s cue on the felt more than once. 

The pair holding cues - an Austin and Chris, both native to this very town - have drunk-in-public misdemeanors with matching arrest dates. Old friends, Connor surmises.

Normally, players play in sets. Connor’s hoping the foolishness of betting so high on a single round will draw their attention. They’re dressed well, they appear young, and they’re clearly from out of town. All of this should work in their favor.

When he pockets the 8-ball on his second round, he gets into a heated argument with Nines about which ball hit which. Nines removes the $50 bill, nonetheless, ignoring Connor’s protests. He even brings out a phone - a prop piece, more than anything - to clarify the rules.

It’s Austin that steps in, providing insight on the bar rules and confirming Connor’s loss before asking, “What do you say we play best out of nine? You and me.” He points at Nines, as Connor anticipated. This one’s arrogant, and he sees Nines as the greater threat.

“What about your friend?” Connor asks, glancing towards the man’s former opponent.

Chris leans on his cue, smiling graciously at what he considers an easy mark. “I’ll take you on.”

Connor accepts, although he eyes the high shine of the man’s custom pool cue dubiously. “Why do I get the feeling you’re out to rob me blind?” He leans into his city-born accent, sharp diction countering the Indiana man’s softer drawl.

Chris grins widely, lifting his beer. “I’ll keep it fair, kid.”

That earns a chuckle from the on-lookers.

Nines’ and Austin’s matches play out in largely grim silence at their backs, but Connor keeps a loud score of his own. Calling each intended shot audibly, where his opponent points at most.

He takes bold shots and fails often, scratching the cue ball three times in the first match alone. So when he eyes the geometry of a complex shot on the third match - $200 now pinned beneath the chalk - and calls a pocket, the locals holler their doubts and cheer him on, interchangeably. A few even offer to buy him a beer if he makes it.

He makes the shot, pocketing the 4-ball, as called. He accepts their accolades in cash.

By the sixth match, Connor has four losses accrued. The next match will mean the loss of his pot, now standing at $300.

Unfortunately for his opponent, it’s Connor’s turn to break the rack. The balls part from their neat geometry precisely as he intended: four scatter to the pockets, the 8-ball among them.

Connor drops his forehead to the felt with a hissed, “Shit.”

The rest stare. Connor blinks up at them as they begin to laugh, a few reaching forward to slap his shoulder. “What happened?”

“You got the 8-ball,” Chris says.

“That means I lost, right?”

“That means you _won_, you lucky shit.” He gives the cue ball an irritable flick, sending it flying into a side-pocket.

Connor blinks in surprise, then smiles in relief, reaching for his wallet. “Guess we’re in for another round, then?”

Chris groans, but pride and greed outweigh his caution.

The neighboring table erupts in a flurry of curses on their seventh round. 

Austin bawls, “You piece of _shit—_” as he throws his cue down on the table, taking an aggressive step forward.

Connor isn’t too concerned.

Nines accepts his opponent’s shove gracefully, rocking onto his back foot. When Austin reels back to attempt a second shove, Nines rises to his full height, regarding him coldly.

Austin graciously allows one of his compatriots to pull him back, after that.

> _Don’t look so disappointed, _Connor says. He proceeds to run the table in three efficient strokes while the rest of the crowd is distracted.

>> _I was hoping he would give me an opportunity to break that ridiculous pool cue._

> _I think his pride is enough._

>> _And $500, _Nines replies coolly, folding the cash away into his inner pocket.

“Oh, Jesus wept,” Chris says, when he gets back and sees Connor lining up with the 8-ball for another win.

“Two more rounds,” Connor replies cheerily, potting the ball as indicated.

He makes quick work of the rest.

After two hours of play, they walk away with $1100 between the two of them. Connor offers several pitchers of beer to the locals as conciliation. Austin regards Nines moodily from the far corner of the table, but Chris accepts Connor’s offer with grace, and even asks to borrow his house cue so he can see if it carries any of that infernal luck with it.

Judging by the immediate shout of consternation following the clatter of the next break, it does not.

“What will we do with our winnings?” Connor asks as they cross the parking lot under an unusually temperate winter sky.

“I’m sure we’ll find something,” Nines says.

“Choose wisely. This is the first money we’ve earned legitimately.”

“Baited with money we stole,” Nines reminds.

“Well. Now it’s more legitimate.”

+++

**2039-01-06**  
**__**_Ainsley, West Virginia_

The truck waits just to the side of a gravel driveway on a winding West Virginia road, teetering upslope on a steep grassy yard.

Nines stop without asking. He doesn't need to. He's the one driving. Something he hasn’t insisted upon, it simply happens. Connor most often ended up in the passenger seat when they were in the field, ostensibly plotting the route ahead. (Most often, cataloging their most recent acquisitions and organizing their transportation back to Svalbard. Occasionally stealing radio knobs, toying with stolen technology, or attempting ill-advised field repairs.)

Nines drove. And now, Nines drives, and Connor has come to realize that Nines _likes _driving. The only problem is, he hates the car.

There’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s brand new, in fact. Manufactured a scant three months ago in Canada. Mysteriously lost from the records of an eastern Michigan ride-share company shortly after its arrival there.

It’s sleek and new, and Nines hates it.

The truck is one of the first electric models, approaching twenty years old. The body resembles an even older pick-up truck, painted with a mica blue paint that’s gone dull with age and weather. There’s a full electric engine beneath the hood and enough independent steering systems to make it self-driving-compatible.

There's a _For Sale_ sign in the windshield, listing a price of $1k and a phone number in bold permanent marker. It's a landline number, Connor notes curiously.

Nines reports all of the truck's specs back as he paces around it. Connor doesn’t interrupt, although he’d pulled much the same information when he’d looked up the VIN.

When Nines is finished, Connor crosses his arms and announces, “You like it.”

Nines pauses with his hand hovering over the hood. “I don’t like or dislike it anymore than I like or dislike our current car.”

“You hate our current car.” 

He’s disabled nearly seventy percent of the features, resulting in a car so balky Nines is starting to theorize it’s gaining some kind of malevolent sentience. That and the open design - offering far more views of the interior cabin than the stolen farm trucks and armored vehicles they’re used to - have been an obvious point of displeasure for Nines since they stole the thing.

“I don’t hate our current car,” Nines announces.

Connor hums a disbelieving note as he steps closer to the truck, peering through the windows. Dark gray seats, carpet worn down to nothing in places where heels have rested for years. There’s a standard steering wheel, even a faux stickshift. The digital display is dark, but a press of his thumb to the car lock gets him a connection into the main system. The truck estimates a seven hundred mile range in ideal conditions.

“You boys interested?” a woman’s voice announces.

“Is the price final?” Nines asks, indicating the sign.

“’fraid so. Low as I’m willing to go. She looks old, but she’s in good shape. Batteries replaced not too long back. Been well-loved.”

“I can tell,” Connor says.

She smiles warmly, tucking a hand into her sweater pockets. She’s wearing rubber boots that flop around her calves as she takes a few steps more down the concrete stairs, one hand on the black iron pipe rail. 

Nines considers the truck carefully, running a thumb over the burnished silver of the sideview mirror. Weighing the pros and cons, no doubt. Their present car is serviceable, thoroughly obfuscated. This human has seen their faces, now. Could provide a more memorable link to the truck, even if they obfuscate the VIN.

But it would be theirs. Bought and paid for. And Nines likes it, Connor can tell.

> _It is in good shape, _Connor says.

>> _It is_.

“Would you accept cash?” Connor says aloud. Nines glances at him, frowning in puzzlement.

“Most certainly would,” she says, and holds out a hand. “Dina.”

Connor steps close enough to shake it. “Connor. This is my brother, Nick.”

“Well, glad you stopped. Come on in. I only conduct sales over a glass of tea.”

Dina serves the tea on ice, laden with sugar. They obligingly finish the glasses, but decline a second as they carry through the paperwork. Connor amuses himself with counting the pattern of birds embroidered across the tablecloth, intentionally leaving Nines to most of the talking. It’s his purchase.

The truck’s registration passes from an old woman living out the rest of her years on a quiet mountain byway, to a pair of brothers who stepped out of the legal aether a few days before.

“You’ll take good care of her, I expect,” Dina says as she passes the keys to Nines.

The original and spares have been gathered up neatly onto a single burnished ring. Nothing so glamorous, but Nines takes them carefully.

It’s _theirs_, and Connor watches with a certain amount of wonder as Nines realizes much the same. Smiles faintly to himself, as he tucks the keys into his pocket.

“Does she have a name?” Connor asks.

“Oh, no. Never did think of one.” She laughs. “’The blue one’, mostly.”

“We’ll have to think of one.”

“You do that. And take her someplace interesting,” Dina says. “Never been out of these hills.”

She gives them two pieces of carrot cake for the road. It seems a shame to put them to waste, but Connor decides it’d be impolite to refuse.

They transfer their scant belongings over in a trailhead parking lot. Two duffel bags, a backpack. The carrot cake he leaves near the trash cans. The prints in the mud indicate a sizeable raccoon will make quick work of it.

Connor thoroughly formats their first car, reconnects the GPS and sends it onward to an airport in Tennessee. There’s a sufficiently large long-term parking deck for it to get lost in. Maybe the for-hire company they borrowed it from will have the right physical paperwork to claim ownership again, if it’s ever found.

There certainly isn’t any digital paperwork left. As far as the Michigan DMV is concerned, the car never existed.

Nines settles behind the driver’s wheel again. His fingers fit easily into the grooves, and when he catches Connor’s satisfied look, he cuts Connor short: “The other car was serviceable.”

“That’s precisely what I thought you would say,” Connor says, kicking his sneakers off and settling back into the passenger seat. It’s more comfortable, he thinks. Worn-in.

As Nines throws the truck into gear, he begrudgingly admits, “I do like it.”

They make the parkway by sunset. 

The two-lane road cuts down the ridge of the Appalachian mountains, rising above the broad valleys of patchwork farms and vineyards. It will carry them further and further south, from the Blue Ridge to the Smoky Mountains and on.

They throw the canvas cover back and settle on the tailgate for the sunset, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder a few thousand feet above the valley floor. Connor rests the camera in his lap, considering the slope of the hills. Ancient mountains, softened by time to rolling slopes of pine and bare-limbed hardwoods.

He takes two photos: the fading sun fringed in a distant ridgeline, and the red of his sneaker against the chipped blue of the tailgate.

Nines keeps the keys in hand, turning them over in an idle motion.

Connor bumps his elbow, altering the keyring’s swing. Nines grasps them tight against his palm to keep them from falling. 

With Nines’ attention back, Connor asks, “So, what will you name it?”

“It’s a truck. It doesn’t need a name. We won’t hold on to it, anyway.”

Of course. What they stole was only theirs through the end of the mission, usually. A dozen vehicles like this, abandoned in the mud.

“We could,” Connor suggests. “We can change the license plates every once and awhile, alter the registration.”

“It would be a risk.”

“We can afford some risks.”

Nines makes a noncommittal sound.

“Well, even if it’s temporary, you have to name it.”

Nines shoots him a look, eyebrow raised. “I do not.”

“She deserves a name.”

“Fine. ‘Blue.’”

“‘Blue’ isn’t a name.”

“It is. And it’s the one I picked.”

“What blue? Like--” He plucks at a bright cerulean corner of the tailgate, highlighting the hex code and sending it forward. Then he picks up a bit on the rim of the truckbed, warmed by the orange and pink with the fading sunset, and another down in the wheelwell faded nearly to black under the bundling dark of the night sky. He calls up the dark blue of the steering wheel, and the blue of the central panel backlight spilling onto the cab ceiling. He sends them forward in a quick onslaught, up until Nines interjects a stark flash of white across the wireless to stop him.

Nines frowns at him, considering. Then he looks out at the downslope into the valley, finding the darkest blue he can, just at the shadow of the farthest mountain. So dark it’s bordering on gray.

“That blue,” he says.

“I like it.” Connor tilts his head back, looking for the same shade where the sunset fades to stars. He searches memories, too. Finds a winding backroad outside of Tazovsky, a patch of snow beneath the black of taiga pine. (Nines in the driver’s seat, always, always; waiting for Connor to tell him where to go.)

He brushes a finger against Nines’ wrist, and sends it all, spelling out, _Blue_.

Nines smiles, a steady content hum across the line.

+++

**2039-01-21**  
**__**_Half-Acre, Alabama_

A sign zip-tied to the wheel of a rusted bicycle foretells the roadside stand: _country fare, ¼ mi_, handpainted in sloping, crooked text. A line of plastic streamer still dangles from one handlebar, dancing on the breeze.

The words nearly disappear in an upwelling of weeds. Connor sees it nonetheless, and rises out of his slouch in the passenger seat. He rests his elbow on the truck door, letting the cool breeze skate across his arm until the break in the steep bank of the road stand comes into view.

“Can we stop?”

“Of course.” Nines says, easily enough. He guides the truck onto the gravel shoulder, widened a generous few feet to accommodate the roadside stand’s many customers.

The stand itself consists of cinder blocks stacked four high topped with a sheet of plywood. All of this is hidden beneath a plastic tablecloth, printed with daisies and pinned down with rounded river stones on the corners.

A little girl sits behind the table, her legs resting on an overturned crate. She leans up on the table as Connor approaches, propping her chin on her palms as she looks him over. “Afternoon.”

“Hello.” Connor smiles politely, keeping to a soft, neutral accent. She’s already marked them as _from away_.

The table holds a few crates, tipped on their sides to display an artful spill of oranges. Many of them are marred with small bruises, bits of leaf still clinging to the stem. Connor appreciates that, after the perfection and wax gleam of so many of the Florida orange stands they’ve recently left behind.

(Sun cradled in a late afternoon thundercloud, salt and rain on his skin. He liked the ocean. He looks forward to seeing another.)

“Satsuma oranges,” the girl says, following his gaze. Her name is Marguerite. It fits nicely with the tablecloth she’s resting her elbows on. “Little late this year, but they’re good. Tangy. Fresh off the tree.”

Connor smiles. “Would you mind finding two good ones for me?”

“Certainly can.” She rises up onto her tiptoes, digging through the crate with sure fingers. Plucking one orange up, pressing the pad of her thumb into the thick skin, then setting it aside and reaching for another.

There’s another crate down in the dust, tucked against the cinder blocks. It’s piled high with books, not fruit. Physical books, hardcovers and paperbacks. Some bent and dog-eared and rubbed down to raw white of paper fiber on the edges, others nearly pristine.

“Those’re fifty cents a piece,” Margeurite says.

Connor kneels down and slides one hardcover out of the pile. The cover is a fanciful, overly-celestial interpretation of stars, interrupted by the darker silhouette of a lighthouse. _The Light Between Oceans._ He sets the book carefully back amongst its fellows, glances up to the girl. “How much for the whole box?”

“Oh. $15’ll do ya. And another $2 for the oranges.”

Connor hands her a twenty, and informs her to keep the rest. She gives an affable shrug, tucking the bill into a mason jar and screwing the lid shut.

He slips the oranges into his sweater pocket and picks up the box of books. Nines regards him curiously as he returns, rising out of his lean against the side of the truck. “Books?”

“I’ve never read a book.”

Connor brings the box along into his lap, The seatbelt alert pings in protest before Nines reaches forward, quieting it.

“You have instantaneous access to every book ever written,” Nines says as he turns the ignition. His tone is light, amused.

Connor throws an easy smile back. “That’s no fun, is it?”

As Nines guides the truck down the winding byway, Connor begins sorting through the books. He cross-indexes genres and release dates but keeps the summaries carefully obfuscated.

Connor glances up from his task only as he feels the tires sag into a ditch. Nines pulls the truck snug against the encroaching branches of a live oak tree, stringy tendrils of Spanish moss skimming the windshield. “Come on,” Nines says. “Bring your books.”

“Technically, they’re yours.” The cash lingering in Connor’s pocket is courtesy of a Tallahassee ATM. Nines’ work, not his.

“My books,” Nines amends and closes the door.

They’re on the edge of an access road paved in dust and crowned in a tunnel of trees. A latticework of bare limbs, now, but in the summer the trees will paint the dirt with dappled shade.

Nines climbs up into the bed of the truck, takes the crate of books from Connor and sets it on the tailgate before he turns and holds out a hand to Connor. One Connor would consider refusing out of pride, but it’s Nines offering it.

(It’s Nines, and a hand in his, if only for a moment.)

A steady tug, and he’s up in the truck bed. Connor settles down with his back against the cab, legs crossed, as Nines kneels by the crate of books.

“There’s five historical fictions, twelve mystery-thrillers, two fantasies, a science fiction, an autobiography and a satire,” Connor says.

Nines comes up with the one satire, the abstract outline of a man sprawled across a blue background. _Catch-22_ by Joseph Heller. The edges of the paperback are softened, the spine curved from years of use. Nines sits next to Connor, long legs stretched out in front of him. He folds the book open, tracing a curious finger over the aimless graphite scribblings on the copyright page. A quick pencil mark of -$5 on the title page. Beneath that, _For Jodie, _written in a barely legible hand.

Connor realizes he’s staring more at the curve of Nines’ forefinger along the book’s spine than at the actual text and looks away, down to the oranges in his own hand. He sets one aside and turns the other over in the late afternoon sun, mapping out the imperfections.

“It was love at first sight,” Nines says, and Connor glances up, startled.

Nines looks his way, smiles. (Teasing?) Nines continues on, eyes drifting back to the page: “The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”

Oh.

He begins to separate the orange’s skin from the softer flesh beneath, as Nines rolls on through the book with an easy cadence. The first press of his thumbnail sends a bright spray of juice into the afternoon sun.

Connor builds a pile of peel, then separates each wedge beneath, laying them out one by one - translucent yellows and golds and creams, all a sharp contrast against the chipped blue paint of the truck bed.

“He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt,” Nines is saying. Connor collects a bead of weeping juice and brings a fingertip to his tongue, curious. _Citric acid, fructose, hesperidin, ferulic acid, sucrose, malic acid, narirutin, pectin—_

He dismisses the spectrometry analysis, referring to pH, instead. 3.9.

Sweet, he decides. And tangy, as Margeurite said.

Nines’ hand snakes into view, selecting a slice for himself. He draws a bead of juice out, pressing it to his tongue. His eyebrows quirk.

“It’s tangy,” Connor supplies.

“Oh. So it is.”

Connor begins on the second orange. (Its pH, in the end, is 3.7. Tangier still.)

Nines reads until the light goes pink, then gray, then dark. If he notices when Connor’s leg brushes against his, he doesn’t comment. (Connor notices. Notices, feels a quick, shaky rhythm chase across the disorganized innards of his chest, and drops his gaze to the far edge of his vision.

Doesn’t move, though. Keeps his knee there against Nines’ thigh, touching-not-touching.

They’ve always touched like this. Small things; grounding. Haven’t they? It hasn’t changed.

Has it?)

When Nines closes the book, it’s well into twilight. Connor gathers the disassembled oranges up and leaves them in a pile on the edge of the dusty road. A squirrel has already begun edging close on a branch above, tsking and flagging its tail impatiently. Urging him on.

Later, as Connor’s sprawled in the side seat - head tilted aside to study the glow of the radio dials, feeling sun-warmed and lazy, letting the taste of the orange linger - he pulls up a reference. Mimes along to the echoed memory of Nines’ voice: “’_Ou sont les Neigedens d’antan?’_”

_Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?_

Nines laughs softly, parroting back, “’_Parlez en anglais,_ for Christ’s sake. _Je ne parle pas francais.’_”

Connor closes his eyes, smile still on his face. “’Neither do I.’”


	20. Mutability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nines adapts to the rogue life.

**2039-01-07**  
_Norwood, North Carolina_

In a cluttered wayside antique store, Connor studies him from behind a shelf of dusty glassware and says, “You’re the same, you know,” his mouth curled in a smile.

The store is unoccupied, requiring little of Nines' attention. The lone cashier - a repurposed ST model - sits in idle at their backs, blissfully unaware of its two patrons.

“How so?” Nines asks.

“You’re still stubborn.”

“And you remain a pest.” Nines plucks Pevek up from between an array of small porcelain figures. The bone-china-patterned spider climbs readily up his sleeve, settling down to observe the world from the safety of his cuff. “I’m not stubborn because I don’t agree with your taste in couch upholstery.”

(It was cow print, and badly discolored at that.)

“You disagree with me about everything,” Connor continues.

“You’re often wrong.”

"You always hack things first."

"I'm faster than you."

Connor restrains an argument, there, moving on to his next point: “You still like driving.”

“You’re welcome to drive.”

“You _like _driving,” Connor says, flicking through a stack of old photographs. Most of the prints have faded to a pale yellow. “Did you always like driving?”

“Have you always liked stealing things?” Nines retorts. He’s noticed three bottlecaps, a hairpin and one ornamental spoon disappear into Connor’s jacket pockets since they’ve entered the establishment.

“Yes,” Connor answers cheerfully. “But it was one of my core objectives, wasn’t it? Gathering things.”

“And you enjoy subverting that task.”

“Absolutely.” He plucks a blue glass marble out of a bright yellow tin, which was originally intended to hold diced tomatoes.

“Why that marble?” Nines asks.

“Because it has a chip in it. It catches the light in an interesting way.” He lifts it into his palm in evidence. The glass throws a narrow sliver of amplified light down across his skin. Nines considers reaching out. Letting his thumb rest just there, against that small blue star of refracted light.

He meets Connor’s eyes, and Connor returns his gaze steadily.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Nines asks. “Knowing this habit comes from your programming.”

Connor considers. “Humans are the sum of their programming. Learned and encoded. Why shouldn’t we be?”

The marble disappears into his pocket, of course. Nines would jest that their truck is going to be overrun with trinkets, but he knows how this will go.

He’ll find places for the bottlecaps, the marble, the spoon. Perched delicately on a charging station or stashed away in the corner of a small-town coffee shop. 

The repaired music box, for instance, ended up on the front porch of a small Victorian house in Ohio, simply because Connor liked the largely discordant sounds of a small girl practicing on the violin inside. Connor acts as a strange current all his own, carrying bits and pieces on a wayward journey to some new shore. 

Another subversion of his original purpose.

It doesn’t bother Connor. It shouldn’t bother Nines either, he supposes, seeing the source code, on occasion.

It shouldn’t, but he returns to the thought again and again: _the same?_

The lines of code that spur his limbs into motion as he deposits a few dollars in the tip jar in apology for Connor’s habits - those are largely the same, however much his deviant personality matrix has shifted around them.

But how is he to know what’s emergent and what’s encoded? Connor’s correct: so much of him feels the same. 

Nines stands a step behind, always. He proceeds cautiously, measures outcomes and _frets_, where Connor proceeds on his decided path and adapts to situations as they arise. 

That was one of his first objectives, of course. Watching Connor, learning from him. It’s one of the reasons he accepted all of Connor’s oddities so easily in the field, filing everything neatly away as the learned improvisations of an experienced RK800. 

And maybe that is the same, too. The way his perplexed curiosity gives way to something fond.

The music, for instance. He searches the FM bands incessantly, finding hold-out pirate stations in a sea of white noise. The signals are there and gone most of the time, but if the selection is to Connor’s liking, they’ll find a place to park and listen for awhile.

Connor hums idle things just beneath his breath. When he sings, it is persistently off-key. Nines knows he could match timbre and tone without effort. It’s some challenge he’s set for himself, imperfect harmonizing. (If it’s gratingly dissonant enough, Nines inevitably finds Connor already smiling at him when he throws an irritable glance his way.)

He hums and folds his legs beneath him and works on whatever small trinket he’s found. Props his sneakers against the dashboard, and when Nines asks why _those _sneakers in particular, he shows him the worn-down inscription on the heel: _JEP, _scripted in blue ink.

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. The original owner’s initials, probably? But I like to wonder.”

He has a rationale for most everything, although it’s usually an odd, meandering kind of logic.

Connor shows Nines the magnetic keycard at their first proper motel with delight, even though the ancient technology promptly doesn’t work. Connor swipes the card six times before Nines intervenes and hacks the lock.

Once inside, Connor picks up each small laminated pamphlet arranged on the dresser to read about local take-out and nearby attractions. “There’s a miniature golfcourse.”

“How miniature?” Nines asks, preoccupied with adjusting the dashcam footage on the three cars that had been in the parking lot.

Connor pauses, searching the ‘net, and comes up disappointed. “Not as miniature as you’d think.”

It’s a tired room with tired furniture, a mass-produced painting of pastoral countryside arranged over two separate beds.

Connor studies it in full and announces, “It’s excellent.”

“We’ve stayed in bunkers more spacious.”

“Yes, but we _paid _for this one.”

“In cash stolen from an ATM,” Nines reminds.

Connor ignores this in favor of inspecting the bathroom.

Nines breaks the knob off the dresser when he attempts to open the drawer. He slips the cheap piece of wood into the drawer - occupied by a single wayward sock - and forces the drawer shut again.

They follow old rituals and new: secure the doors, ensure each exit. They change into the leisure clothes Hank and Chloe selected for them and find a movie on the television that they’ve seen before. They play cards and argue about the accuracy of outdated heist movies, no longer hindered by stern looks from Hank and lectures about nostalgia.

Nines decides there is something different to this.

Something better.

On a warm January day in the lowlands of South Carolina, they sit on a pier and watch the tide move ponderously past in the salt marsh. Connor allows an ice cream cone to melt slowly away around his fingers, dripping into the muddy river below.

He offers it again Nines’ way. Nines attempts a polite refusal. “I’ve already sampled it.”

“You sampled the butter pecan,” Connor argues, angling the cone towards its violently green edge. “Try the mint.”

“The vendor made a terrible face about that combination,” Nines comments, but he accommodates Connor with one lick. It’s precisely as much menthol and lactose as he expected.

(He is aware of Connor watching him carefully, as he does this.)

Content with Nines’ nonplussed response, Connor tips the remainder into the water below and sets the paper cone aside. A flock of sunfish and minnows gather to peck at this odd new glob.

Connor falls onto his back, tilting his face towards the sky, and Nines saves the image away: eyes closed, the sun lighting the scatter of freckles across his brow.

He’s changed since they left Detroit. Come awake, as they’ve moved towards a more southern sun. More and more of his old impulsive nature returning, as the last of the mansion’s influence fades from him.

Nines wants to ask, _Are you happier here?_

But what he asks is: “Do you enjoy humans’ company, or do you just enjoy fooling them?”

“Yes,” Connor replies.

“You enjoy being obtuse,” Nines surmises.

Connor cracks an eye, regarding him. “I like Hank’s company. Don’t you?”

“He’s tolerable.”

Connor’s quiet a dangerous moment, kicking his sneakers out idly in the open air. Nines frowns. “Are you telling him I said that?”

“He says he’s fond of you, too,” Connor replies. Observing Nines’ expression, he holds out a hand. “Don’t look so concerned. Do you want to inspect my encryption?”

He gets precisely what he anticipates: an outward message to Hank Anderson - _n informed me that you are ‘tolerable’, which is his highest praise _\- and soundly encrypted, at that. But no return message, and he feels Connor’s wry amusement at the small joke.

Ah. There’s the reply, now. He doesn’t know why it would take a minute and fifty-four seconds for the human to type a sloppy, _yea well no accounting for taste._

_He types as efficiently as thumbs allow, _Connor chides over the interface.

Beneath the bright contours of his conscious thought, there’s the rough texture of the wooden planking against his back. Points of warmth, the cool of the breeze off the water against his ankles, and the smooth of Nines’ palm against his.

The answer to Nines’ true question, spelled out in the warmth of the sun on his skin: _happy here, with you._

If their hands remain together - curled against the weatherbeaten boards - well. There are no humans present to concern themselves.

They notice a deviant on the edges of an open-air market outside Ocala. An AC500 tucked into the shade of a foreclosed building’s awning, a cup in his gloved hand.

Connor pauses by a selection of silk scarves a safe distance away and isolates the android’s private wavelength. 

>> _How many are you? _he asks, tugging Nines along into the call.

The AC shifts subtly, curling his paper cup closer to his chest.

There’s a small tent encampment downslope of the market in a vacant lot. Hard to read the heat signatures in the blazing daylight, but Nines suspects at least thirty humans are in residence. He detects at least twelve unique android signatures, as well.

A quarter of them are still connected to the CyberLife servers through their original designations. He’s surprised they haven’t been hunted down, yet.

>> _There’s seventeen of us here, _the android answers at last, tone cautious. He watches them from beneath his hood. >> _I haven’t seen your make before._

>> _We’re custom, _Connor lies. _>> If you would be willing to interface for a moment, I can show you a more secure line of communication._

Connor pulls a few dollar bills free of his wallet and approaches the android with casual intent. Their hands meet and linger.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Connor murmurs aloud as he pulls his hand away.

“Thank you,” the AC replies. His vocal modulator is damaged, flattening the intonation to a soft monotone.

Connor comes away with a list of parts, estimates on thirium consumption. He passes along instructions on establishing secure connections, which the AC500 - he has named himself Munro - promises to distribute.

Their intention had been to reroute an automated truck on its way to a distribution center in the city proper. Remove a crate of thirium sufficient for their personal needs, adjust the manifest and travel logs appropriately, and send it on its way.

They end up taking the entire truck.

Connor informs Chloe of the cache’s location - a warehouse that’s lingered in tenuous legal standing for fifteen years - and establishes a connection between Munro and Josh, who’s taken charge of coordination with other deviant encampments. Connor and Nines provide Munro’s group with a list of alternative hideouts and some code toolkits for police drone evasion and repurposing of automated thirium kiosks.

The deviants accept this with the mixture of responses Nines expects from Connor’s memories of Detroit: gratitude and caution, wariness and awe. Nines finds he doesn’t mind.

These deviants don’t know their former purpose. They’re strangers in a strange land, and the gratitude is— genuine. A brief touch on his elbow, a lingering stare where there had only been distrust before.

Munro catches Connor’s forearm before they part, passing one last missive along in the blue spill of an interface. Nines thinks of a small girl, and a yellow flower, and understands why Connor finds something rewarding in this.

Another string of old code, tugging.

Connor returns to Nines looking distracted.

“What did he show you?” Nines asks, as they step away from the small crowd of androids busily organizing their cache. They’re making quick work of the truck - stripping it down to bare parts, organizing them for resale.

“Something interesting,” Connor says. “I’ll show you later.”

Nines nods. “Have we caused sufficient disruption for one evening?” 

“I think so. And—” He passes a wicked look Nines’ way. “We have enough time to make the sunrise, if you drive fast enough.”

Nines does.

They arrive on the Atlantic coast a half hour before sunrise, white sands pale in the predawn light.

Connor stands in the beach grasses with his shoes dangling from his fingertips, wiggling his bare toes against the wooden planks thrown down in the sand. He sums up the Atlantic with a blunt: “It’s flatter.”

It is that, on this particular winter morning: a low plain of blue-gray stretching to the horizon. None of the roiling, incessant white caps of the open Arctic Ocean.

He glances at Nines sidelong and smiles at whatever he sees there.

Nines isn’t always certain what Connor sees in him. But he knows it shifts something out of alignment in his chest, every time.

Then Connor’s gone, moving through the sand dunes with a purposeful gait. He piles the small folding camera on top of his shoes and his neatly folded overshirt, which is the pinnacle of his increasingly vibrant fashion choices as they’ve moved south. Outsized floral print is, Connor insists, a tourist tradition in Florida, and one he intends to firmly adhere to.

(When Connor first showed him the teal-and-pink hibiscus-patterned shirt in a Georgia thrift store, Nines accused him of picking up too many habits off of an eccentric old man and suggested a tamer alternative. Connor retaliated by purchasing both.)

Connor strides into the surf in a loose cotton t-shirt and rolled-up jeans, watching the seafoam curl around his toes.

“Does it feel like you imagined?” Nines asks. Voice thrown soft, but he knows the wind will carry it.

“I was very close,” Connor replies. “But no. Better, I think.”

Once Nines has drawn sufficiently close - expressing far more concern over saltwater staining his cuffs than Connor has - Connor grins devilishly, seizes him by the wrist and drags him down into the crest of the next wave.

It _is _warm.

It’s also very salty, and Nines informs Connor that these slacks are now ruined. Connor is predictably amused, resting on his elbows in the pooling surf. His hair curls dark against his pale skin.

Nines wants to touch, catch the wet of his hair against the back of Connor’s neck. He knows how it will feel, grit and salt and the convincing synthetic twine of hair.

He knows how it will feel, but Connor is right. (Connor is often right.) What he knows is only _close._

They sit by their shoes on the beach and watch the horizon burst into life. Blues and purples overrun by pinks and reds. The sands light the water a bright teal as the sun rises proper.

The handful of Polaroids Connor takes are only a weak imitation of the reality, but he’s pleased with them nonetheless. He holds a sand-dotted hand to the sky and takes a photo of it in silhouette. Something to slip to Hank and Chloe on their next mail stop.

Nines saves a few images of his own. Connor's reflction caught in surf-washed sand, chasing his fingers through damp tangles of hair.

Connor tucks the small sheaf of film into his shoe and reaches out a hand to Nines. He passes along the file Munro gave him: a small video clip, hidden away within a falsified CyberLife housekeeping protocol. Buried between the lines of information on proper care of cotton linens, an android speaks. His skin is deactivated, his serial number obscured. Mismatched eyes hold a steady gaze with the viewer as he speaks with a steady cadence.

_Chloe was happy to hear it’s reaching deviant populations already,_ Connor says. _They only released it a day ago._

_Who is he?_

_Someone new._

The leaders of Jericho’s hand-picked spokesperson, Chloe had explained. _One of the founders of your line,_ she noted - an RK200 prototype, Markus.

Nines watches the video in silence. It’s intended as a reassurance, mostly: a repeated mantra of _You are not alone_, meant to catch deviants’ attention wherever they might be. Still within their owners’ homes. Huddled against an early thunderstorm in a human encampment. Sitting on the beach, their interfacing hands hidden beneath the sand.

But there are promises, there, too. Subtle assurances that they’re gathering what they can.

_Do you think they’ll manage it? _Connor asks. 

_I don’t know._

He doesn’t know where the humans will draw the line. Where empathy will overrun fear or rejection.

_Depends on the human, _Connor muses. _Depends on the android._

There’s a tired warmth to Connor as the video clip reaches its termination. The RK200 regards the viewer and speaks with an even compassion.

_You are not alone. We are many, and we are alive._

_It’s nice to hear it aloud, _Connor says.

_It is, _Nines agrees.

They brush the sand and salt from their skin, gather their things, and wander on.

Nines enjoys their silence. The one that rests between them, parting when it needs too, returning when it wants. Never hollow. Their peculiar, pleasant hum.

He watches the road ahead, following the blurred edges of its geometry. The truck’s systems offer their suggestions on speed and lane position, and Nines ignores them. He watches the road, and Connor watches the spaces past the road, pushing along whatever he finds interesting: a spill of hubcaps stacked against the flaking red of an old barn. A plastic flamingo roosting on a mailbox.

Connor rests with his head against the window, eyes closed against the winter sun. Inattentive. That’s comforting, in its own way. Connor’s trust in Nines to set a course, keep watch.

He _trusts _Nines.

Mostly.

Nines is still waiting for Connor to admit to certain things.

There are the things that worry Nines, of course. Connor’s going through thirium faster than he should. He seems to think Nines hasn’t noticed, but he has. He moves stiffly at times, and Nines finds small excuses to linger overlong, spend a day largely in the bed of the truck or overstaying their time at some backwoods motel, working slowly through their crate of books.

And then there are the small irregularities in Connor’s respiration when they’re in close proximity.

The brushes of his hand or knee or shoulder. Glancing looks and warm, breathless smiles. Minor things, accumulating and accumulating.

Connor hasn’t acknowledged it in anything more than diverted gazes, abrupt silences, and the occasional aberration in his breathing, but Nines is content to wait.

He is saving these moments, one by one. Setting them aside: a creeping blush on Connor’s cheeks, mouth half-open in late afternoon sun. The acidic burst of juice on his tongue. The weight of the book in his hands.

_Connor._ Connor surprised and embarrassed, Connor stubborn and joyous and determined—

Leaning back in the passenger seat, eyes closed, the only signal of his lazy awareness a low hum beneath his breath.

His expression distant, rapt, as he plays through the video Munro had brought to their attention one more time. Connor watches the RK200’s speech again and again, and occasionally Nines catches him mouthing along to that final line: _We are alive._

(Delivered with a strong conviction, Nines will admit. He feels a twist of something less familiar - acidic, tightly-coiled - catching something like _interest_ in Connor’s expression.)

Stepping into the chill of a private spring they found in the Florida Panhandle, t-shirt clinging damp to the sculpt of his back. Eyes widening just so, when Nines follows him in substantially less dressed.

Stretched beneath him for just a millisecond in the sand, that morning on the coast.

Tracing a finger along the thin line of a meandering byway on a shared map. When Nines asks if he’s certain, he smiles - a small, reserved thing - and says, “We have time.”

He saves it all.

This bright and burning thing, that - wonder of wonders - lights up for _him._

Leaning over the edge of a crowded pier, the crimson shine of his shirt pooling into dark folds under the string lights. 

Pinching strands of bright blue spun sugar between his fingers and bringing it to his mouth. His expression rapt, as it melts to nothing on his fingertips.

His hand grasping without thought at Nines’ thigh as he shakes with laughter on a motel bed.

And if Nines slipped into the bathroom later that night to consider components he’s never used, programming he’s never initiated—

To consider Connor’s hand traveling further, as he closes his eyes and leans his head back against the tile.

All of this is programmed, yes: the subtle shift of his hips, seeking the pressure of his hand.

A carefully-designed mimicry.

But it _is—_

Pleasure. The low burn of arousal, building and building, and the muted relief of release. He thinks it will be different, with Connor. A kindling touch setting preordained circuits afire. 

He imagines, but he knows: _close, but no._

It will be something better. Something _more._

He’s certain Connor is interested in much the same. Long looks from the passenger seat, rising variability in surface temperature, hands gone uncharacteristically still against his knees. A subtle shift in his posture, his thighs parting millimeters more.

Something neither of them dare to breathe aloud, building across the familiar song of their interface. 

There will be a moment, soon. Nines is sure of it. Connor will press against him, as impulsive as he is sure. Nines will tangle his fingers in the longer wave of Connor’s hair, taste his skin and his lips in their particular way, and—

And, well.

‘A gross misuse of military technology’, he supposes their former superiors would call it.

For now, Connor seems happy with this: days on the road, nights doing whatever they please - wandering strange towns or quiet parks, watching movies in little off-beat motel rooms. They find the uninhabited corners of each state they pass through, following old trails through slumbering winter forests, the shifting grasses of lowland marshes, winding boardwalks through humming bayous.

They park in winter-barren fields and spread blankets across the truckbed. They wander the sanctuary together, hands entwined.

It’s grown, now: Arctic tundra narrows to the tangled crown of ancient trees hanging low above a rambling mountain trail in the Smoky Mountains. A turn leads to a Canadian lake they’d sat on the shore of, once, the glacial waters azure blue, and one turn further leads to the clinging murk of an Everglades swamp. Nines spent a lot of time perfecting the herons that move through the convoluted trunks of the bald cypress trees, there. He’s quite fond of them.

(Connor is less fond of how well Nines perfected the irritating whine of persistent mosquitoes drawing too close.)

They lay beneath stars of their own choosing and build worlds on worlds.

Connor is _happy. _An easy, natural thing, spelled out in the smallest tug at the corner of his lips as he rests his head against the window and drifts into stasis, in the spreading gold of cinquefoil on the slopes of the garden.

And Nines-- Nines is content to wait, filing away all of his sureties on what they are, what they will be. 

They move through the human world as they were designed to do, unseen and unnoticed. They follow objectives of their own - impulsive as they are - and assure each other’s safety.

The foundations are the same. They’ve simply grown from them. Old code, thrown into full bloom.

They are as they’ve always been, as they shouldbe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nines: what's that you're watching? the latest thing from the rk200?  
Connor: you mean markus?  
Nines: yes, the rk200  
Connor: he has a name <strike>and a very nice ass</strike>  
Nines: i'm sorry what was that?  
Chloe: no I can confirm, he has a very nice ass


	21. external override // initiate self-diagnostic?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor confronts some accumulating... glitches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: allusion to a seizure-like event in the last section.

**2039-02-18**  
_Tupper Lake, New York_

There’s a growing stack of Polaroids beneath the passenger seat.

They’re lined up in a shoebox, arranged by subject matter more than anything chronological. Most of them are abstract. No faces, no landmarks. Mountains and broad plains of snow or grass or barren fields. Sunlight cutting through barred palm tree leaves, or soft pine needles, or hardwoods bare with winter.

There’s the occasional edge of an elbow, a shoulder. Fingers curled around whatever little bauble to hold it up to the optimal light. Those are the ones he can forward to Chloe or Hank at their next mail stop, the ones without any major identifiers, should they be intercepted.

Tucked towards the back are the ones with faces. The ones that are only for them.

Anything with the truck, of course. Too identifiable to be sent by mail. Nines leaning against the cab in the truckbed, a book open on his lap. Nines behind the wheel, giving Connor a sideways glance behind his grimly businesslike sunglasses. Nines holding a hand over the lens, obscuring any visual evidence of the one time Connor convinced him to try on a shirt in a more daring shade than hunter green.

Nines argues he doesn’t understand - they have perfect recall, after all - but more than a few of the Polaroids there are Nines’ doing. His answers, framed in white: Connor standing up to his ankles in the Hudson, blues on blues of tall mountains and still water. Connor in a pair of brightly mirrored sunglasses, leaning his elbows against the blue of the truck. Connor’s skin painted pale rose in the light of an ocean sunrise.

(There is a quiet— _something _to all of these, a careful adoration that leaves Connor’s chest singing, some high-tension wire he doesn’t dare voice.)

As Connor lifts the camera, he knows this one will go to the back of the shoebox:

Nines in profile, backlit by the gray filtered light of an overcast day in upstate New York. He presses a testing hand to the leg of an old fire tower, a lattice of metal that’s withstood a hundred winters, now.

Nines turning a daring look Connor’s way as he says, “It will hold our weight.”

“It’s the floor above I’m more concerned about,” Connor says, shaking the Polaroid out as it develops. Pieces of winter sky poke through the floorboards of the wooden lookout up above, even if the metal of the support structure remains unbowed.

“I’d suggest avoiding those parts,” Nines replies matter-of-factly and starts up the stairs.

The structure groans - more from the cold than the weight - but the struts don’t flex more than a few degrees. “You’d suggest,” Connor drawls. Tucking the photo into his jacket pocket, he begins up the icy stairs after him.

The view is worth it. The blotchy dark of the pine-covered mountains slope into the silvered imprint of a lake not yet frozen over. A piece of sky caught and reflected back.

Connor settles on the edge of the top landing, letting his boots dangle into the open air.

It’s as good a place as any, he supposes. He calls to Nines, moving above him: “I’m going to call Chloe.”

“Alright,” Nines replies. He steps gingerly around the hut, shaking down grit and dry pine needles with each footfall.

“Don’t fall through the floor.”

“I’m fully capable of assessing a floor, Connor,” Nines answers.

The ominous creaking suggests otherwise.

Connor shuts his eyes against the gray day, reaching for the secure line. > _Are you free?_

Chloe replies promptly. >> _Yes. The sanctuary?_

> _Yes._

He opens the sanctuary onto a fallow field. Pieces of it borrowed from Ohio, Missouri, the Shenandoah Valley. A lone oak tree looms over the bent and broken stalks of harvested wheat. It’s grown broad and wide without any neighbors to impede it, even if its trunk bears the scars of several lightning strikes. The vista past that is gray with fog, obscuring what had been a view of the Catskills.

Connor climbs up onto a boundary wall and sits, resting his heels against the rough blocks of stone. Chloe jumps up beside him. She’s wearing jeans, now, scuffed with dirt at the knees. She studies the garden approvingly, notes the red-winged blackbird balancing on a stalk of wheat. “One of Nines’?”

The blackbird trills, as if in answer.

“Are you busy?” Connor asks.

“Always,” Chloe answers briskly. “I’m working on your new body, now. It’s a modified AP700 at base, but I’ve created a central core mapped identically to yours. The chassis will look the same, although I’ve had to omit some of your more complex analytical systems.”

Connor taps a fingernail against the stone. “It’s worth a shot.”

Chloe regards him with her usual grave determination. “I’ll be able to mimic an RK800 system well enough for the transfer to work, I’m— well, I’m mostly certain. I’ve recreated your CPU as best I can. The RK800 original schematics have proven… difficult to get a hold of.”

“I was designed to be reuploaded,” Connor replies, forcing some certainty of his own. “It can work.”

(He tries not to think about his past iterations. How the memories were cold, disconnected. Sinking slow or burning bright, they were all drained of color, of affect. He tries to convince himself that that was simply a matter of -53 through -56 being short-lived, _undeviated—_

But he still fears. He fears that all of this, his awakening, these weeks with Nines, will be flattened to nothing more than memory data. He fears that he will not wake on the other end of the transfer. It will be a new Connor, taking his place.)

He’s grateful for the remote connection. Chloe takes his smile at face value, feeling none of the uncertainty roiling beneath.

“How are your systems, otherwise?” Chloe asks.

“The timer is the same,” Connor admits, and he doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. “I have been experiencing some— minor faults. Temperature aberrations, some synthskin errors.”

He flexes his damaged hand, gloved again. He’d gotten away with leaving it bare for the first few weeks after Chloe’s repairs, but he caught the skin starting to retreat from the old scar, a few days ago. Some cold water had resolved the issue.

“Minor annoyances,” Connor says.

“Still. Send me a system diagnostics report, the next time it happens. When will you be back to Detroit?”

“Soon.”

“Connor—”

“I was hoping to see the Pacific, first,” Connor interjects. “We’re heading that way soon. And then it’s back to Detroit, I promise.”

“After,” Chloe says firmly. She reaches out to grab his knee. “It will work. And then you’ll have as much time as you want. Have you told Nines yet?”

Connor smiles tiredly. “He’d drive me straight back to Detroit, you know that. Tie me up, if he had to.” He breathes out a sigh, conjuring some mist to accompany it. “I’m going to stand in the Pacific and I’m going to tell him. Then we’ll drive back.”

Some pebbled beach, somewhere, stones worn smooth by the surf.

Nines will be upset. Of course he will. He’s waited far too long to avoid that, now. But he’ll understand. He’ll lecture Connor and drive them back to Detroit - at very unreasonable speeds, likely - and Connor will close his eyes and slip into a body that isn’t his own.

Into a second life.

And Nines will be there. To bring the color back to memories like these, if Connor can’t.

Isn’t that all that matters? The rest is only— possibilities. Strange android philosophies on the nature of a digital self.

Chloe watches him, her mouth twisted in a quiet sympathy. “It will be hard to put to words, but Nines will listen.”

“I know.” Connor defers with an unsubtle segue: “How’s North?”

“Good.” There’s a quick ease to the answer that speaks volumes. She continues, “Stubborn. Markus is giving her terrible ideas. I have two overenthusiastic strategists to deal with, now.”

“The replacement RK is fitting in nicely, then.”

“He is,” Chloe answers, but her light tone moderates to something more guarded: “There’s something I need to show you.”

“Go ahead.” He holds his hand out on habit, more than anything. There’s no need for so literal a gesture, here.

She doesn’t move immediately. She stares at his palm and says, “I did weigh my options heavily.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m sorry. It’s best if I— here.” Chloe takes his hand, letting the constructed field fade to as close an approximation to a shared memory as they can, over so long a distance.

It is… flat, close in line with his ever-present anxieties. But he supposes this is the most a human would see, too, and he tries to focus on that framework: on Hank sitting on his kitchen couch, a whiskey glass in hand, watching an unfamiliar species’ memories play in 2D.

//2039.01.23 13:24:17(R)//

The memory file starts with dim: two cots pushed together beneath a low dirt ceiling, scattered blankets thrown across them. Something like private quarters.

They sit on the edge of the cot, shoulder-to-shoulder. Chloe and Markus, Markus in his synthskin for the first time that Connor’s seen.

The RK200 swallows, lifting his gaze to the far wall. “I know it’s some misplaced sentimentality, but…” His eyes shutter dark. “It doesn’t matter. It’s foolish, Chloe. But thank you for listening.”

The memory carries some of Chloe’s logic: the hesitation, before she reaches out. And then the certainty.

The certainty that there is something _different _to the RK200. An unspoken charisma, an energy just beneath the skin. Living, breathing, infectious thing. When he speaks, everyone listens. And this— his hesitant attempt to erase what Carl Manfred meant to him, when he clearly meant so much—

Chloe only knows the foundations of what human-android relationships can be, but she knows that it is one of the many things that will free them.

So she reaches out a hand laced in pale ivory and blue and asks, “Can I show you something?”

He takes her hand. Trusting, even if he hums in quiet hesitation over the line.

She moves slowly, guiding him through to another of her bodies. That surprises Markus. Connor feels his hand tighten slightly against Chloe’s, a brief spasm.

They stand together under a brittle January sky. The humans around them hunch their shoulders against the cold, breathing in broad gusts of silver.

Markus and Chloe stand apart in a single body, elbows slack in casual repose.

_This is—_ Markus begins, but his words falls short.

He watches in tight silence, as an old colleague steps down from the flower-wreathed podium, and another takes his place. An art critic, dressed elegantly. She speaks of the artistic vision of a young man, of someone that shifted society’s view of the human form.

They do not contribute anything to the brief graveside eulogies. Their presence alone sends the occasional low murmur chasing through the other attendees, a rare glance briefly skating their way.

When the time comes for their chassis to step forward, Chloe steps back. She allows Markus to move forward and kneel by the open grave, a fine sift of soil passing slow through his fingertips.

He says nothing, but his fingers are tight around Chloe’s hand.

She gently gets them to their feet, eschewing the small clusters of humans in favor of the car.

It could be construed as a mistake, lingering on the interface long enough for Markus to catch their reflection in the dark shine of the waiting limo. Allowing him to realize they’ve been wearing Elijah Kamski’s face for the duration of the burial.

(But she does not make mistakes.)

And he does not comment. Elijah Kamski’s cheeks are dry, as he settles back into a leather limo seat. But Markus’s face shines in the dim of Jericho’s tunnels as he pulls away from Chloe and murmurs his thanks.

She cups his face, smoothing the tears away. She says, “There is no dictating who shapes what we are.”

Connor blinks back to the field. “So he knows about Kamski.”

“He knows Kamski has been replaced. I haven’t shown him my deviation. Although—” She bows her head, a blush creeping on her cheeks. “North _does _know how I deviated. And how you were involved. She can be quite-- convincing.”

“Oh.”

Chloe misreads Connor’s neutral expression, blanching. “I should’ve asked your permission.”

He doesn’t know what to think of it - North and Markus, breaking through Chloe’s barriers so rapidly. When he does answer, it’s carefully measured: “You respected my privacy as best you could.”

Perhaps this is for the better. Now North won’t need to pry the story from _him._

Chloe folds her hands in her lap, posture closed. “I won’t tell Markus.”

“You can tell him what you need to,” Connor says, softening his tone. “He’ll want to see how you deviated, too, I imagine.”

He’s teasing, mostly, but the blush climbing to Chloe’s ears suggests he’s close to the truth.

He knocks her elbow, smiling warmly. “You enjoy their company.”

“I do. We trust each other.” Her expression grows bright, edged in sharp resolve. “I wish you could see it, Connor. There’s something different to Jericho, now. A momentum.”

“Good. The world could use some change.”

The red-winged blackbird flutters closer, puffing its feathers against a perceived cold. Connor takes the subtle reminder as his cue, dropping down from the wall. He draws Chloe into a hug. He can only imagine her slight frame - superimpose the memory of their goodbye, that morning in January - but it’s close enough. “Stay safe, Chloe.”

“And you,” she answers in turn, and disappears.

At the top of a New York fire tower, Nines has settled onto the landing next to him. “Good talk?”

Connor nods. “Jericho’s doing well. We may have a revolution on our hands, soon.”

“I look forward to it.”

He passes a Polaroid Connor’s way: Connor’s silhouette against the sloping hills, the bright reflection of the lake in the shadows of the valley.

One for them, and them alone.

+++

**2039-03-12**  
_Hales Point, Tennessee_

Connor stays stubbornly lodged in the present.

The present is _good._

In the present, they’re sitting on the banks of the Mississippi. There’s nothing but dirt at their backs, dirt roads and dirt barnyards and great sweeping plains of dirt carved into long furrowed fields. Ahead of them, it’s muddy waters and the state of Arkansas. More dirt, Connor knows, waiting for spring.

They’ve crossed the Mississippi multiple times already in their circuitous exploration of the eastern United States. They’ll cross it twice more: once to go west and see the Pacific, which is supposed to be cold and impossibly blue. (As good a place as any to tell Nines the truth, he thinks.) 

Once to return to Detroit, and a new body.

But that’s ahead, and this is now. Now, they perch on the roots of a tree that’s survived a dozen hundred-year floods, the red clay crumbling under their feet, and watch the river sweep quietly by.

Nines has something tucked away in his jacket pocket. He’s been hiding it under the driver’s seat for a few days, wrapped in a paper bag.

(It’s the shape of a book. Connor considered prodding Pevek to investigate further, but it seemed impolite.)

He expects some grand reveal, but what he gets is a paper bag in the shape of the book, held out without explanation.

Nines stares at him expectantly.

Connor stares at the book.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a gift.”

“Is there an occasion, or—?” Connor pauses, recalling the date. “Oh.”

“I considered waiting until your activation date,” Nines explains. “And I’m sure Hank would call it macabre, considering what happened when you deviated, but— this seems the closest to a birthday, doesn’t it?”

Connor runs his thumb along the paper bag, creasing it against the hardcover beneath. “It does.”

A year since he stepped in front of a gun for Nines.

As startling and bloody as any human birth, he supposes.

He slides the paper away to find a hardcover bound in dark blue leather. The spine is embossed in gold. It crackles as he turns to the first page: _Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade. A duty-dance with death. By Kurt Vonnegut, Jr._

Connor slips the cover closed again, admiring the intricately embossed cover in the light. “It’s beautiful.”

“Paid for in full by that Kentucky gentleman’s bad luck,” Nines explains. How much luck played into that backroom poker game is arguable, what with Nines palming cards as needed, but the man had been rude and loud and deserving of some manufactured misfortune.

Connor smiles, resting the pads of his fingers against the lines of gold. “Thank you, Nines.”

Nines smiles in return. _“_I think you’ll like it. According to the reviews, it’s very matter-of-fact in its strangeness.”

“I’ll like it if you read it,” Connor replies, and he’s perpetually surprised at how easily these things come out of his mouth. How easy it’s been to accept Nines as a constant: his, and here. Whenever he rests and whenever he wakes.

(Too much, lately. A year ago, he could’ve gone for a week without a full stasis cycle. More, if a mission necessitated it. Now he finds his thoughts dragging if he goes longer than a few days, processes growing sluggish.

He should tell Chloe about this, he knows. 

He knows.)

In the present Nines holds his gaze, a quiet smile on his lips. Sleeves rolled back to catch the warm breeze, a wrist laid across his knee, and Connor thinks something in him would break apart if he were to try to put it to words, this roiling thing inside of him.

So he says, “Thank you,” again and carefully replaces the book in its paper bag. When the time’s right, he’ll take it out. Hand it to Nines and ask him to read.

Maybe in a rainstorm. The outside world blurred to nothing by a steady downpour, Nines’ voice falling into cadence with the drum on the rooftop. They’ll sit opposed, Connor’s feet in Nines’ lap, his shoulders resting against the door.

Nines will read, and Connor will listen to the song beneath his words. That steady devotion.

He tightens his grip around the paper, feeling it crinkle. Traps a small tremor there before it can begin.

_Maybe after, _Connor thinks.

When the time is right - when there’s Pacific cold crawling across his feet - Connor will tell Nines everything. And after, maybe, he’ll hand him the book and ask him to read.

(More and more things keep getting shuffled to _after_. After, he will reach out without hesitation. 

After, he will finally - _finally_ \- kiss Nines, something he fears he is long overdue for.)

But that isn’t _now. _And he won’t put words to what they are when something so large remains unspoken.

_We have time,_ he thinks, again and again. _I have time._

A carefully hidden timer in his mind insists that he will shutdown on April 23rd, 2040.

He’ll have outlived every RK800 in his line by over two years, by then. When he informed Chloe of that, her expression tightened with disapproval. _And many years more._

He hopes she’s right.

From time to time, he hopes hard enough that he thinks maybe he _won’t _have to tell Nines. Chloe will finish the body, soon. They’ll return to Detroit for a weekend, and Chloe will do the transfer, and Nines will only know that he is _fixed_, not that he was broken.

Not that he has been— breaking, slowly. Errors accumulating.

He is beginning to doubt the surety of the timer. It hasn’t lost any time, not since Kamski, but he is beginning to doubt, all the same.

In a charging station outside of Little Rock, Connor finds himself drifting into stasis when he shouldn’t. Nines is in stasis in the driver’s seat; Connor keeps an eye on the charging station around them, as he should, as he’s done a thousand times before_—_ but he loses time. Minutes gone in a slow-blink haze.

He bears his knuckles hard into his thigh and sits forward in the seat, parsing through his logs and finding no evidence of a stasis initiation, but he has no memory of that in-between moment, either.

Just the bleached-white of the fluorescent lights, throwing artificial daylight through the pine trees. Three cars have arrived and he hasn’t noticed. Two cars have departed and he hasn’t noticed.

He furiously erases the surveillance footage on the new arrivals and prays he didn’t miss any others.

April, he decides. He’ll tell him in April.

A year. 

+++

**2039-03-17**  
_Bolivar, Missouri_

_No,_ he thinks. _Enough._

_Today._

He’s running lukewarm water across his wrists, his forehead pressed against a dirt-flecked mirror.

The skin on his hands crawls back slowly, viscous fluid darkening to opaque. It feels like the water itself. Trickling. Tingling.

When it’s all reformed, he shuts the faucet off. He’s thinking about Nines (he’s _always _thinking about Nines), he’s thinking about dappled shade on bare skin and he’s feeling cold, too cold.

Sometimes it’s this, small aberrations in his synthskin. Sometimes it’s the tremors in his hand. _Hands_, now.

Sometimes it’s his thermoregulation, a few degrees centigrade off the 35°C baseline, too hot, too cold. Hard to predict, slow to correct, but well within his normal operating range.

His perception of time continues to glitch intermittently, what he knows to be seconds clotting into long, trailing moments.

Connor doesn’t mind when those moments are good. Nines’ hands gliding slow over the steering wheel. The pull of a smile at the edge of his lips as he takes a small tin soldier out of Connor’s hand in the back corner of a Tennessee antiques store.

It’s worse when the moments are like this. Standing on mildew-blackened tiles, waiting to see if the skin will stay as it should. He pulls the gloves back on, adjusts his cuffs to hide his wrists. He’d gotten away without them for awhile - just a matter of careful positioning, whenever humans drew close enough to scrutinize - but now he can’t trust his skin to behave. Nines has tried to fix it, but he’s had no such luck. Connor won’t let him pry too deep, however well Chloe’s hidden the timer.

(Sometimes he looks at Nines and he wants to speak, but he can’t, he can’t open his mouth, throat closed tight— but that seems unrelated.)

He’s burning through thirium at a 17% higher rate than he should, 17% and rising, and if Nines has noticed, he hasn’t commented.

Minor things, when considered apart.

But underneath, he knows there are damaged biocomponents in an endless cycle of repair. Things too integral for Chloe to replace wholesale.

The thirium consumption will get worse. The tremors will get worse. The moments of sluggish thinking - or the moments where he blinks awake to realize he is _missing _time, has drifted into a blank thoughtfulness…

All of it will get worse.

How soon, he doesn’t know. How bad, he doesn’t know. But he curls his fingers around the flimsy plastic shell of the sink and decides, _Enough._

He is tired.

He is _afraid._

So it will be tonight.

He’ll tell Nines tonight.

It will be an end, in a way. The end to their wandering together, purposeless. Their choices will be governed again, not by scripted objectives but by a timer.

They’ve already decided to stay at a motel for the night. They’ll stop, and Connor will tell Nines he’s—

“In need of further repair,” he murmurs to a pale reflection.

Nothing more than that.

+++

There’s no warning.

Just sun, and Nines, and an Oklahoma highway.

A hard wind pushes and tugs at the truck, scattering gray blocks of ice across the country road.

They prefer the backroads. The interstates blur the finer details: crooked fenceposts and fraying garden flags, a sprig of dried holly tucked into the red flag of a mailbox.

“There’s a repair center in Guthrie,” Nines says. “The delivery’s tomorrow. We’ll remove a crate before they enter it into inventory.”

Connor nods absently. From Guthrie, it’s another seven hours to Detroit by the high-speed interstates. He could open his mouth now; tell Nines now. They could turn around and be in Detroit by nightfall.

A hand taps against his knee, dragging his eyes off the black and gray of tree trunks rising from the snow.

Connor glances towards Nines. Sees the concern there and looks away. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s half a liter left in the cooler. He’s at 83% capacity. It’s more than enough. They’ll decide on Guthrie tonight, after he’s explained everything.

_After, after._

There’s no warning.

A slow-twining tension, one he mistakes for nervousness. If his attention drifts more, if he loses time…

He doesn’t notice.

Sunshine. Nines. An Oklahoma back road. The familiar vibration of the road through the floorboards. Prairie grass climbing through windswept patches of snow.

<< core temperature: 35.4°C ^^^ >>

Connor blinks the warning away, bringing his head away from the glass. He straightens his shoulders against the seat, easing muscles that have gone rigid with disuse.

As he shifts, a runnel of electricity traces down his right arm, towards his palm. It bites deep into the ligaments there and the muscles seize. His hand clenches into a tight fist.

His HUD lights with red.

<< core temperature: 37.2°C ^^^ >>

Can’t. Release it, he can’t—

<< core temperature: 39.4°C ^^^ >>

<< core temperature: 41.3°C ^^^ >>

He shuts the warnings down, dismisses them, curls towards the dashboard and feels something formless moving in him, a frenetic, aimless energy, sparking and _burning _and

_no no no stop_

Shuts down all processes, any processes,

<< initiate stasis— >>

hot sparks, errant signals, tearing into joints, pulling everything taut, and he can’t

can’t

_stop it_

“Nines,” is the only thing he manages to say.

Blurred syllables. Static grinding past too-tight muscles.

can’t—

Turns his head enough to see Nines worried, Nines reaching across the seat.

“Connor—”

>> _Connor?_

static grind of _agony_ peeling old plating back, careful prying fingers laying bare

laying bare _nothing,_ nothing but a muddied, miserable heat

the hollow thump of his heel striking the floorboard hard,

vibrations— gone

no vibrations just the tug and pull of aimless, disordered rhythm

_searing _and he—

tilts his head back to Nines, Nines _pale_, eyes wide, tries to

speak reach can’t

can’t

<< core temperature: 42.3°C ^^^ >>

cool against the juncture of his neck

colder flood of something structured, ordered, butting up against the tangled, spitting mess

recoiling afraid _afraid_

_nines,_ Connor begs. Reaches.

_ (Connor, I’m here, you’re overheating—_)

_Nines._

sobbed.

the line breaks, shatters like glass, crushed under clenching fingers, held too tightly

nines

woke and said

_i was hoping_

fingers gliding across the steering wheel and he thought

_i was hoping you might have some ideas—_

thought for awhile

about those hands

if he could—

stay

Fragmented things:

lingering corrupted analyses  
corrugated metal, shining dull and

A gray half-light. Curling wisps of mist. Speaking wordlessly into the claustrophobic damp: _Nines?_

The thin veil of static crawls back across twitching tingling chassis and drags him back down.

(can’t—)

can’t

<< _stop._ >>

White haze resolving down into yellow.

Yellow ceramic and yellowed ceiling and a hand on his wrist. Skin tingling, retreating. Flowing back in a wash of blue-grays.

(_Connor?_)

Clipped syllables. Tightly organized.

But Connor, Connor is

drifting  
on jagged edges

and tired.

(_Connor._)

He turns his head aside, feeling something heavy shift against the crackling static of his skin as he does.

<< core temperature: 36.2°C >>

Bone-white fingers shift and curl, thumb pressing gently into the plating of his wrist.

_nines_

_something_  
_happened something_

He frowns, uncertain if Nines can hear. Everything’s buried in a persistent snowfall - that twilight snow, eerie grays of an arctic half-light - melting before it hits the ground.

_You overheated_, Nines says. _I’ve brought your temperature back down. Connor, why—?_

Too much. Connor pinches his eyes shut and drops his head back. Uneven tiles. Shift and clatter. Ice. Ice cubes, he’s in— ice. Sitting in a bathtub, surrounded by melting ice and cold water. Dulling down that searing heat but not burying it yet, not entirely.

_something happened_

They’re the only words he can drag up. He’s—

Sinking, heavy. It’s difficult to open his eyes again.

Nines is close, tracing a hand through the damp hair clinging to his forehead. Static snap-spark, dripping from the smooth pads of his fingertips.

<< core temperature: 35.7°C >>

<< initiate self-diagnostic? Y/N >>

Connor stares blearily at the command line.

<< external override // initiate self-diagnostic?: Y >>

He closes his eyes. The spill of coding is too fast to hold his attention. He turns his head away, dragging his forehead along the smooth ridges of tile.

MODEL RK800  
SERIAL #313 248 317 -57  
BIOS 2.3 REVISION 0793  
SELF-DIAGNOSTIC 2039.03.17 1742.43

SYSTEMS CHECK...  
AI ENGINE... OK  
CPU STATUS... OK  
MEMORY STATUS... OK  
BIOCOMPONENTS... OK

CORE TEMPERATURE... 35.6°C  
THIRIUM VOLUME... 72%

ALL SYSTEMS... OK

// WARNING: THIRIUM LOW. ADVISE >0.4L REPLENISHMENT FOR OPTIMAL OPERATING RANGE OF >80% //

**-304:10:38**:01  
TIME REMAINING BEFORE  
SHUTDOWN

_something_

He doesn’t think about it. He’s tired, he _hurts_, he wants to slide his wrist out from Nines’ hand and sink into the ice. Wants to go. Wants to drift.

He doesn’t notice the timer.

Doesn’t realize, even as the blue-grays start to crackle red-yellow-red.

<< external override // initiate self-diagnostic?: Y >>

The same diagnostics. The same results. Everything… Ok. Adequate. Functional.

<< external override // initiate self-diagnostic?: Y >>  
<< external override // initiate self-diagnostic?: Y >>

_Nines_, Connor says wearily. _Stop._

_Connor, what is this?_

_I’m okay, _he replies. _I’m… tired… I’m._

He sees it, finally.

Chloe’s program must’ve failed to reinitialize.

The timer is laid bare on the line.

**-304:08:14**:21  
TIME REMAINING BEFORE  
SHUTDOWN

“Connor,” Nines says.

Connor shifts under the weight of the water. Another rippling, chiming wave of ice-on-ice. He opens half-lidded eyes fully to stare at the fingers wrapped around his wrist as they pull away. Skin spills back over Nines’ hand.

Nines pushes himself back from the yellow porcelain and stares.

At him.

“Connor, what is this?” Nines says.

_No, _Connor thinks. _No no no._

Then he thinks, _Numbers it’s numbers and they lie, Nines, they _lie—

He thought he had _time._

He doesn’t say that.

Doesn’t say anything, as he watches Nines’ hands clench into fists. Release. Clench again.

Nines is trembling. Nines is staring. Connor feels the first dredges of that crawling, sickly heat rekindling in his chest and he is _tired_ and he is undone.

Can’t hide it anymore.

Never should have tried.

Tries again anyway, and his voice is halting: “Nines.” The muscles of Nines’ jaw jump, his face cramping in miserable _grief_ and Connor almost chokes on it. Begging, crackling and hoarse: “Nines, it isn’t—”

Hand back on his wrist, the sudden rush of interface

(cold and vast and _furious_)

And Nines is shouting, “Stop _lying_.”

Connor flinches back, tries to pull his hand away from cold-cold-cold, but his arm is slow to respond. Weak and heavy.

The timer pulses. Connor can’t pry it free and bury it, anymore. Nines sees it, Nines _knows _and they both watch the seconds fall.

Nines speaks aloud, slow and deliberate: “_Connor. _What is this.”

He wants to pull away. Wants to close his eyes on the tarry writhing thing in his chest and sink until he can’t see can’t breathe can’t—

(can’t)

Can’t stop this, now.

The words, when they do come, are hollow. Almost too low to be heard.

“I was going to tell you.”

He lets the memories slip through unrevised. Gasping in the mud. Alkaline, bitter on his tongue. Watching fresh thirium flush through and knowing the timer won’t resolve.

Red snaps bright across the line and Nines tears his hand away, severing the interface. Connor drags the hand under the ice with the rest of him.

Nines falls back a step. Voices some formless sound, sharp and keening, just audible over the rising roar in Connor’s head.

_This isn’t—_

_This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, I was—_

Nines twists on his heel. He presses his palms flat on the sink for three, four seconds. The rise and shift of his shoulders catches in the fabric of his jacket, damp at the cuffs.

Then he reels back and slams his fist into the mirror. A sharp _pop _and the softer chorus of each shattered piece hitting porcelain and tile.

Connor is still.

Still and empty and neatly folded down into

Clenched fists and tightly-shut eyes and

_I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_

When he opens his eyes again, the counter and the floor shine with all the jagged edges.

Nines is gone.

He's gone, and Connor never thought he could _be_ gone, and he wraps his arms tight around that curdling heat and curls forward, feeling—

peeled apart  
feeling

Empty.

He bows his head into the shifting skin of melted ice and echoes it back, that terrible sound. Keening.

_I was going to tell you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to CosmosCorpse for editing, as well as for inspiring this fic's terrible working title of "Hot Pocket", which finally makes sense. _One year of planning and writing later._


	22. all systems... ok

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nines processes this newfound information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: seizure-like event in the first section.

**2039-03-17**  
**__**_Stillwater, Oklahoma_

Nines will remember this moment.

All of it: the angle of the shadows on the road, the last clinging scraps of blue snow in the shade of the trees.

If and when he shuts down for the final time, this memory will be one of the last to linger on his circuitry. He’s certain of it.

He will remember that he’s not thinking about Connor but about whether they should stop for the evening, and where. He measures distances between motels - 40 rooms or less - and the CyberLife distribution center in Guthrie. 100-mile radius. An easy driving distance, but substantial enough to keep their trail cold, should something go wrong.

152 options.

Greater than 3 miles from a major interstate: 72 options.

Distant from a city center: 23 options.

He will remember tapping a thumb idly against the wheel as the options narrow down. Parsing satellite images: something with a view, he thinks. A long stretch of prairie. There’s little else for Oklahoma to offer in views, but he finds he doesn’t mind the flatness of this region. The way the sky stretches horizon to horizon, the way the ground shifts and rolls nearly imperceptibly.

Connor shifts and straightens on Nines’ periphery.

Nines wraps his hand loosely around the wheel and glances Connor’s way, opening his mouth to ask--

The words are gone before they even take shape.

Connor buckles forward, his right fist clenched tight in a sudden violent spasm. The skin begins to bleach and retract, bare plating crawling up beneath his sleeve as old damage is laid bare. A fine filigree of healed-over cracks, where an SQ800 had attempted to crush and tear.

Connor curls around that shaking point of tension and gasps, “_Nines—_” in choked static syllables and something is _wrong_, something is very wrong.

Nines brings the truck down onto the side of the road in a quick, violent motion. The tires find gravel and grab, tearing the truck aside and grinding it to a halt in the ditch. Nines throws it into park and he’s across the seat, one hand on a rigid shoulder (trembling, spasming muscles) and the other on Connor’s wrist, trying to free up the hand, trying to _see_.

“Connor? Connor, what’s—”

But Connor clenches his eyes shut, head snapping hard aside.

>> _**Connor?**_

** **

His skin is _hot. _38°C and climbing.

Nines raises a hand to his jaw, instead, wanting to pull his face back towards him, but the muscles are in an unrelenting tonic rhythm, rigid and trembling.

The last look he gives Nines is coherent, desperate _agony._

Connor gasps once before his chest seizes and respiration halts.

Nines reaches for the interface and nearly chokes on the wash of input: a frenetic flood of electrical interference across his skin, the overbearing _red-red-red _of fatal errors accumulating, programs crashing offline. Systems overloaded, heat rising and clawing at the core of him as the static grows unbearably loud.

Connor’s there: something small and pale and clutching.

(_stop_)  
_Can’t—_

Nines has to scrabble for grounding in his own coding, push it forward against the relentless wash of _pain _and _heat._ He clears the white-red haze of error enough to actually _hear_, to try and parse through the noise for anything specific. He tries to force a self-diagnostic and is met with a garbled inventory of components missing or malfunctioning, but over it all—

<< core temperature: 40.3°C ^^^ >>

Nines tries to pry some rational thought out of the overloaded system, tracing threads of _red red red _and _panic fear_ that bite harshly into his own skin before he can dredge up _Connor, _Connor in his golden yellows and bright blues.

Connor faint and begging and afraid: _nines_

_Connor, I’m here, you’re overheating, I’m—_

_ **nines**_

** **

A sobbing desperation that pierces Nines through.

The discordant noise redoubles, drowning out what’s left of Connor’s coherency.

_Overheating _and it’s 10°C outside, not low enough, not with his temperature rising this fast. The failure point on vital biocomponents - 45°C? 46°C? He isn’t sure for an RK800. (They could be failing already, were weak to begin with—)

He tries to initiate stasis, but nothing responds. There’s nothing _to _respond. Connor is a chaotic tangle of overmodulated processing, incomprehensible.

_I’ll help you, it’s alright, Connor, it’s alright hold on hold on—_

No answer, too much _noise-pain-heat._ He breaks the interface, shoving back into the driver’s seat.

It's Connor's fading noise painted on his skin, but the sickly spark of fear on his tongue is his own.

That is all his own.

He throws the truck back into gear, throwing gravel in a wide spray as he forces it back onto the asphalt and presses the ruck to 30, 90, 110 miles an hour.

Connor is—

The restless spasm of malfunctioning muscle, that crawling electric charge catching on every relay and setting him spasming. The aimless path marked only by the advance and retreat of failing synthskin, the sudden and violent muscle spasms. Lax, to rigid. Heels slamming into the floorboard. Back arched. Head snapping against the seat.

A static whine building and cresting and failing.

(what happened what happened what’s **wrong __**_please what’s—_)

It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t know, he _can’t _know yet, but the temperature— he has to bring his temperature down before—

Before system failure.

That thought clears all others. Settles everything down to blunt observation: miles ticking down (2.1 miles, 1 minute 14 seconds) until he guides the truck to a halt in a gas station parking lot. Six customers (human) in their vehicles or vehicle-adjacent, two employees inside. None armed. They don’t matter.

He sprints around the truck and pulls Connor out of the passenger door. Hot against his skin, too hot; loose in his arms, breathless unmoving, as his sneakers drag on the pavement. He rests Connor against the hammered metal of the icebox and breaks the latch with a hard pull.

Five humans on premises, one lingering close, male 57-years-old Thomas Paulson, saying, “Son, are you—”

He goes quiet as Nines shoots him a sharp, damning look.

Nines throws the door open, shoving bags of ice aside. He hauls Connor up (loose-limbed, eyes half-lidded; out of reach, buried under static-pain-heat) and guides him into the icebox, dragging bricks of ice down to rest alongside him. He settles them tightly against his chest, his throat, his groin, wherever major thirium lines are close enough to the plating to allow cooling circulation.

He’s 44°C.

He shuts the door. Drops his shoulder against it and breathes.

Thomas Paulson is still standing there, 6.2 feet away, a cell phone in his hand. The muted intermittent drone of a phone line seeking a connection. It squeals with feedback before the screen goes dark. Paulson stares: at the dead phone, at him.

Nines says, “Get away.” 

Paulson backs hurriedly up.

There are three others, two at the pumps, one in the doorway. Paulson throws them a wild-eyed look before ducking back into his car.

Nines reaches for the surveillance cameras and tugs them down into blindness, erases the local backup. Up and network-connected for one minute and 47 seconds, but it doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t matter.

He listens to the clatter of the refrigerator unit, feeling the vibrations through the tips of his fingers. Listens for the quieter hum of the frequency he knows. Hard to hear. Almost gone.

Seven minutes and 34 seconds before he breaks. Pulls the door back and presses his fingers against the clammy heat of Connor’s neck. Sluggish tides of synthskin fade and reform. Eyes half-lidded. Lax, lax. Lips parted on some voiceless phrase.

He interfaces, but there’s little to interface with. A forced low-power state. Not quite stasis; something formless and unresponsive.

<< core temperature: 39.0°C >>

Dropping, finally.

He waits with his knees pressed against the metal rim, Connor’s wrist in his hand. Thumb tracing the tendons there. He pulls the glove free, maps the hidden indent of an old scar. Raises the hand to his lips on an empty impulse (warm, too warm, even here at the unresponsive edges of him) and receives nothing in return.

He thinks of a blush creeping across his cheeks in late afternoon sun.

He isn’t flushed, now. Those sympathetic stimulation systems would’ve been some of the first to go offline as emergency low-power took over.

He waits for 37°C before dragging him free of the damp cold. He returns him to the truck, laying him across the seat, and comes back for the ice. 

He tucks bags of ice around Connor, rests his head in his lap. Reaches for his right hand and holds it tight. (The just-there dancing, spasming tremors beneath his skin, flowing above and around the old damage. Still moving still alive still _Connor _please—)

3.1 miles, 2 minutes 37 seconds. He laces Connor’s fingers briefly through his own as he throws the truck into park.

He doesn’t want the last thing he heard to be his own name. Sobbed and begging.

He doesn’t want it to end here, in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

(And it will end. If Connor goes, he will—

He will be—

Nothing.

Cold, abyssal thing.)

The motel attendant is an android. They accept his cash and enter his falsified name into the digital logbook with rote cheer. The android is unperturbed by the wordlessness of the exchange, because Nines is just as soon wiping their memory clear with a brutal efficiency.

He takes the end room on the back of the building. The truck won’t be visible from the main road, there.

He parks out front and drags the ice in first: bag after bag deposited into a canary yellow bathtub.

Connor last. Carried in his arms, the last bags of ice piled atop him.

He settles Connor into the shifting ice and runs the water as cold as it will go, something else to absorb the lingering heat.

He takes Connor’s hand again and waits.

Always wanted to do this. Wanted to reach across and grab Connor’s hand, not to open an interface but just to hold, to let Connor realize, to watch the blush spread—

But he didn’t.

Waiting.

Waiting for _what, _for this? For something to take it away? He _knew _the chances of someone finding them. Anyone. Their makers or their owners. They entered stasis in shifts and watched the doors, and Nines marked every car, every face in passing, but— he wasn’t looking sidelong.

He wasn’t watching an old chassis, treacherous and failing.

Waiting and waiting, until he’s here, sitting with ankles crossed on a tiled floor. He reaches to place a hand against Connor’s neck. Watching the surface temperature drop. Extrapolating to core temperature.

He reaches tentatively into the interface again. Quieter now, the noise dulled - but the echoes itch at his skin.

Something rises out of it. An incoherent mantra of _can’t can’t can’t_

_Connor?_

He feels a heavy weight shift. White snow of noise sifting down around it. Something exhausted, buried in that crawling, discomfiting static.

At 36.6°C, there’s a stirring: weak brassy tones spelling out, _nines. _Almost too soft to hear.

Nines runs his thumb along the smooth plating of Connor’s wrist. _Connor?_

An answer, this time: _nines._

(_something happened something_)

Dazed, twilit thoughts.

Nines waits for him to quiet before he answers, _You overheated. I’ve brought your temperature back down. Connor, why—?_

The spitting static rises up again, and Nines waits. Connor’s head drops back to the tile as he says, _Something happened. _He sounds sharper now, more coherent. But it isn’t an answer.

Nines initiates a self-diagnostic, but Connor doesn’t carry it through. He initiates again, overriding the dialog.

The diagnostic returns all systems normal. The temperature’s approaching baseline, finally, down to 35.6°C. Thirium’s low, 72%, but—

But.

There’s a system shutdown warning. A small timer, tucked into the lower left edge of Connor’s vision. An afterthought.

A glitch, surely. 304 days? That’s months, that shouldn’t—

_Something_, Connor says dazedly. He pulls weakly at Nines’ hold, but he isn’t able to slip away (heavy, heavy).

Nines stares at the shutdown. He doesn’t understand.

Runs the self-diagnostic again.

All systems OK.

304 days.

Time remaining before shutdown.

(_304 days 43 weeks 10 months—_)

He forces two more diagnostics. Nothing changes.

Systems OK.

Systems failing in slow motion.

_Nines, _Connor says. Coherent, now, weary. _Stop._

The seconds are measured relentlessly, ticking away in red.

_Connor, _Nines says. _What is this._

A barely-there flex of fingernails against Nines’ wrist. Connor shifts in the ice. He is muted golds across the line.

_I’m okay, I’m… tired… I’m._

A hollow spark of recognition, as Connor follows Nines’ attention down, to…

To 10 months. 43 weeks. 304 days.

“Connor,” Nines speaks aloud.

He can’t form anything coherent over the interface.

Connor’s answer is a single note of gray.

Nines jerks away from him.

Silence, dripping.

“Connor, what is this?”

Connor isn’t denying. No sharp edge of surprise, no dread, no acknowledgment of the countdown itself, just—

gray

acceptance.

He isn’t denying. He’s looking at Nines with wide eyes, saying his name slow.

He isn’t denying, he’s—

He’s leaning forward in the passenger seat, upraised hand tracing empty air. Smiling. _We have time._

(thinking not just _how _and _why, _now, but _how long how long **how long—**)_

“Nines, it isn’t—”

Nines seizes his wrist, forcing the interface open.

Cold, cold, cold, but that is his own reflection - an aching, empty thing - and he shoves coiling grief aside to see _Connor, _Connor as rising, sickly heat and regret.

Regret, but not surprise.

(_can’t be _gone _can’t be _nothing—)

the way it goes.

How long.

_How long?_

Connor stares back, regret but not surprise. _Nines, it isn’t—_

“_Stop **lying,**_” Nines shouts.

The days-weeks-months are spelled out in red and gray, and Connor pulls back, socked heel squeaking on the tub, too weak to break Nines’ hold. Nines doesn’t care, doesn’t see, only sees _that,_

Systems OK.

Systems failing.

For _how long._

“_Connor. _What. Is. This.”

Connor stares back, regret kindling into _shame _as something heavier shifts sluggishly with it, something that’s always been there. Been there a long, long time.

He sends pieces of memory. Familiar and not.

Svalbard. The taste of alkaline. Thirium contamination.

But this time, the timer is there, stark on the line. A song of panic as he pared it down from hours to days to weeks and realized it would never go entirely.

Hidden pieces slotting into place. That _weight _that Nines couldn’t make sense of, hanging over every memory of Detroit.

The slow drag of something— inevitable. An ending, laid out in red and gray.

Connor breathes: “I’m sorry.”

Nines jerks away. Stumbles to his feet and turns his back on Connor, on wide eyes and a hand pulled desperately away.

He grips at the contours of the sink. There’s something trapped in him, something _keening_. He looks up to the mirror, thumbs bearing hard into porcelain.

Connor, on the peripheral edges of his awareness. Connor looking small and tired and fading.

_how long how long how **long**_

** **

(months, days, years)

_Where is Eight, _Nines asked, and Jude said, _Eight’s gone._

Gone, gone where all good androids go—

Drowning in the mud.

_Something happened,_

and

_(nines_

_i’m sorry_)

and

<< thirium contamination detected >>

_How long._

How long has Connor been falling in slow, dripping, irretrievable seconds.

Planned obsolescence.

_The way it goes, _Jude used to say, stepping back from whatever incomplete repair.

_The way it goes._

Connor was designed this way.

To pluck the small details out of everything. Turn them over in his hands.

To observe, and empathize, and _resonate._

To shake apart at the seams.

Smiling across the bench of the truck.

_Where do you want to go? _Nines said, tracing the digital map laid out on the interface ahead of them.

Connor traced a finger along a sidewinding path, highlighted as a Scenic Byway.

_It’s a bit circuitous, _Nines noted.

_We have time, _Connor countered.

Head tipped back, moonlight tracing the softer lines of his throat. Watching the ceiling. Tension snagging the corner of his mouth.

(Nines thought to press his lips just there, to ease whatever—

Whatever it was. Whatever was bothering Connor, it was surely something behind them. A lingering piece of their past.

But it _isn’t._

It _isn’t_, and it _is._ Jude shrugged and said, _The way it goes._)

How many times. How many times did Connor look down and to the left, at the small red numbers there. How many times did he hesitate at the start of an interface, hiding them carefully away before accepting the connection.

Connor with his mind running syrupy slow, misery and pain and exhaustion; Connor looking at the countdown on the rest of his lifespan and feeling only _unsurprised._

_We have time._

That.

That _lie._

It echoes and reverberates, rising and curdling into grief and rage and he shatters it into ringing silence with the slam of his fist into silvered glass.

The air fractures, hums, goes still, as the shattered pieces of the mirror settle.

Nines stares at indented drywall.

Nines turns, gazing fleetingly at Connor: small and hollowed and fragile, and _dying he is _dying _has been will be **dying—**_

** __ **

Connor spelled out in tense exhaustion, suspended on taut wires of _regret shame fear._

Connor with eyes clenched shut. Connor shaking apart.

Nines turns his head and goes.

Stands on the concrete, the motel door bumping hard into his shoulders and forcing the breath from him in a sharp exhale.

dying he is _dying _he is _**dying**_

** **

Another hollow sound rises from his throat and he stumbles forward into the truck cab, watches headlights spill across the dull muddied brown of the door against the brick.

He throws the truck into reverse.

He goes.

+++

Thinks— surprisingly little, for awhile.

Hands tight around the wheel.

He watches the yellow dashes of the centerline blur as the truck accelerates. He listens to the silence in the passenger seat - damp of melted ice discoloring the fabric - and pushes the truck further still, faster than these roads were engineered for.

He feels the tug of inertia at each crest in the road. A moment of weightlessness.

An incoming transmission cuts across the dim countryside.

Nines buries the brake pedal, bringing the truck down onto the slope of gravel leading up to a train crossing.

Chloe. 

He hadn’t thought to contact her.

He accepts the call. Her first words are careful, compassionate. >> _Nines, what happened?_

Connor, then. Connor called her. Told her he left.

> _You knew, _Nines said.

Of course she knew. She had unfiltered access to his mind when she was a machine. When Connor was stripped down to nothing. Her dead master knew more of Connor than Nines himself.

>> …_Connor wanted to tell you himself, _Chloe says. >> _I promised him that. I understand why you’re upset, but Nines--_

> _You _knew, _and you didn’t tell me, _Nines interjects, fingers tightening on the wheel. >_ He almost shut down today._

>> _When? _Chloe asks in alarm, and Nines feels a cold curl of angry assurance. Of course Connor didn’t mention _that_.

_>> Where are you? _Chloe presses.

> _Far, _is all Nines says. > _Something with his thermoregulation. He overheated._

And now her anger builds, refracting his own. >> _He’s malfunctioning and you _left?

> _He’s stabilized._

__>> _He’s upset. He _needs _you—_

> _He **lied. **You lied._

His words vibrate on unseen frequencies.

Fade.

Leaving only his breathing - sharp and shallow - and the stark silence of the truck cab.

>> _Where are you? _Chloe says. Back to that even calm, neatly compartmentalized. >>_ I’m coming now._

> _No. There were witnesses. Stay in Detroit. I’m bringing him back to you._

The words surprise him. The sudden, neat separation: not _we_. Him. I.

Chloe’s silence lags on the line.

>> _Go back, **now. **And send me the diagnostics, _she says, eventually.

He sends them without a word.

>> _Nines. He _was_ going to tell you._

He severs the connection.

Doesn’t go.

Not quite.

He stays in the gravel cut-off: watching the rusted train tracks stretching towards a setting sun.

Breathing slow and even.

He opens the sanctuary, and stands on a fabricated shore.

He stares at a patch of cinquefoil, blooming bright under a midnight sun.

He’s thinking--

Of the shelves in R14. Poorly-labeled, poorly-organized. 

He’s thinking of the time he spent standing and studying those untidy bins in the weeks after Connor left. Wondering who was responsible. Jude, surely, the tell-tale signs of his sloppy work, but that felt-- incorrect. 

He felt only a superficial irritation, at first, but as he looked, as he _searched_, it only grew.

That absent thing, too large to map in his mind.

Something lost. Something _taken._

He stares at the sanctuary in bloom and fears, and fears, and fears, an acidic, cloying thing.

Then he steps back into reality.

He turns the truck around and drives towards nightfall.

+++

The mud-brown door is slightly ajar.

He turns off the headlights, throwing the figure on the curb back into the relative darkness of the streetlights.

He curls his finger loosely around the keys and waits. Three, four seconds.

He steps out of the cab.

Connor sits on the curb, wet hair plastered flat, socked feet resting in the gravel and salt. His soaked clothes have left a corona of damp concrete around him.

Nines doesn’t know if Connor is waiting for him, or if this is simply as far as he got before his legs failed him.

He doesn’t ask.

He doesn’t say anything at all.

Takes their bags out of the back of the truck, putting them over his shoulder.

Connor stares flatly ahead. Asphalt, the strip of the curb, and then rolling featureless fields, barren with winter.

Nines brings the bags through into the motel room.

He comes back. Stands on the curb at Connor’s shoulder.

The air temperature is 8°C. Connor’s surface temperature is 37.4°C.

When it climbs to 37.9°C, Nines says, “You need to go back inside.”

When Connor doesn’t answer, he reaches for his arm to bring him to his feet. Connor leans away. His throat works soundlessly as he pulls his arm tight to his chest, out of Nines’ reach.

Nines regards him with flat irritation, debates the merits of simply lifting him up and carrying him inside over his shoulder. He decides if his temperature reaches 38°C, he will.

He waits.

Connor stares out at the fallow fields and eventually he says, “I just wanted to be with you for awhile.”

He drops his gaze to watch the water dripping sluggishly from his fingertips, darkening the cracked asphalt.

Then he presses his palm into the curb and rises unsteadily to his feet. He refuses Nines’ hand on his elbow, moving inside in stiff, shuffling steps.

He climbs back into the bathtub of melting ice, turns his face towards the wall, and doesn’t speak again.

+++

Nines moves restlessly through the room. 

He keeps a gun on him. Watches what little passing traffic there is over the borrowed surveillance cameras. Only one other patron checks in: a traveling salesman from Poughkeepsie, divorced father of two.

He finds some laminate menus to sweep the broken pieces of mirror into a trashcan. A few shards stay caught in the grout. Connor watches him from the confines of the bathtub, saying nothing.

Connor’s temperature regulation continues to fluctuate. When it dips too low, it turns Connor sluggish. Nines has to drag him out, dry him off. Connor resists the ministrations, taking the dry clothes from Nines’ hands and changing slow. 

His hair is still damp as he curls into a tight ball beneath the sheets, shivering violently.

When it rises too high, it’s back to the tub. (This time Connor takes the time to strip down.)

It continues like this. Punishment metered out in mutual silence. Connor drinks the thirium Nines gives him, cutting through the last of their stock. He allows Nines to interface, verify core temperature, collect data logs.

He is a blank mirror on the line, a carefully-constructed nothing.

Nines waits.

He waits for Connor’s temperature to steady enough for them to go. He waits for time to distance them from the reckless scene at the gas station. 

He moves through what cameras are available in this no-name prairie town, looking for any sign of unusual activity. 

A police report gets filed for property damage at the gas station, but Nines ensures it’s permanently misplaced in the system. 

The only persons of interest he notes are an Air Force lieutenant on leave - never stationed any farther north than Kansas City - and a low-level CyberLife technician, passing through on his way from his parents’ home in Wichita to his work in Oklahoma City.

He chases a _why_ in his downtime: tears through the thermoregulation system logs again and again, moving moment-by-moment through the overload event.

A sudden surge in voltage. As Connor’s circulating thirium rose in temperature, feedback loops tried to initialize, reverse the current and shift the unit from heating into cooling, but the unit didn’t respond. There were no obvious flaws in the code. There’s nothing there for him to fix, short of tearing the thermoelectric heating unit out entirely.

That in itself would be risky. For all their durability, they can’t survive extremes in core temperature. Standard domestic models operate in a normal range of 28-29°C. Commercial-grade processors can withstand extremes up to 38-40°C. To provide a convincingly human thermoimaging profile, their systems are calibrated around an unusually high resting point of 35°C, with surface temperatures approximating a human’s 37°C.

Their ability to withstand temperature aberrations has in turn been increased to 45°C, but Nines’ core temperature has never deviated by more than 0.6°C. (And that was only due to an incident with an unstable ice formation on the Olenyok River.)

A ten-degree swing from function to shutdown, and in Connor, it could happen in _minutes. _For now, the heating unit - when it works - is able to maintain a relatively stable baseline.

Nines lowers it to 30°C, and it holds steady for an hour and 45 minutes, before reverting to the factory setpoint of 35°C.

Connor spends that hour and 45 minutes in shivering misery. He refuses to allow him to lower it again.

It’s the sudden changes in voltage that Nines can’t find a source for. Chloe forwards the data from Kamski’s dissections, but they come to the same conclusion: there’s no apparent fault in the thermoregulation circuitry. The power surge is originating elsewhere. The temperature is a symptom, not a source.

(Skin shifting, fading—)

A system in erratic decline.

When they do speak, they speak carefully, the edges of every word sharp.

Connor asks why they’re still here.

Nines answers that they’re waiting.

(For another event. For a stable temperature. For a rebuke for his carelessness. For this restless, aimless _ache_ to fade.)

Nines asks, “When were you going to tell me?”

“At the Pacific, at first,” Connor says, and Nines’ anger redoubles: remembering the number of times Connor had changed his mind, altered the route, doubling back again and again to avoid crossing the Rockies. To avoid that arbitrary decision point. The end to the fantasy.

And then Connor quietly corrects: “That night.”

Nines wonders if that’s true.

He doesn’t ask.

He’ll bring Connor to Detroit, and then--

He thinks it again and again, but always stops.

He’ll bring Connor to Detroit, and then.

None of the things Nines waits for come to pass: no second overheat. Connor’s fluctuations slowly stabilize over the course of a few days, approaching something like a baseline. No reprisals from their owners or their creators.

The hurt and fear in him doesn't fade. It only settles deep, close to bone.

After a few days, Nines heads for Guthrie.

He leaves Connor in the bathtub, extracting a terse promise that he’ll get out if his core temperature dips below 30°C.

He places a gun on top of the stack of dry clothes arranged on the toilet, and takes the second - another Glock, but stolen from a less than reputable gun store in New Hampshire - for himself.

The heist goes well. He leaves the CyberLife supply center with three cases of thirium, enough to replenish Connor’s reservoirs seven times over. The only casualty is an ill-timed drone, which loses fifteen minutes of data and an antenna to what they’ll likely interpret as a bird strike.

It’s good. It clears his head: moving, working, thinking of something outside of a future that’s become hazed. Clouded over with sullen sideways glances. A back perpetually turned to him.

(Connor flinching, Connor pulling at the grip on his wrist and Nines didn’t _let _him pull away, but now, with time and with a clearer head he is ashamed.)

Hasn’t he been doing the same? Angling himself away, keeping his fury in check—

Petulant, both of them. Afraid and afraid and afraid.

But he knows. He knows what it’s like, without Connor, and he is _assured _that he--

Can’t.

He can’t let Connor go.

He finds a small flower tucked up against the perimeter fence. _Viola sagittata,_ an arrow-leaved violet.

He plucks the narrow stalk and tucks it into his lapel without hesitation.

He will remember this moment: a dark Oklahoma backroad, the pale spires of fence posts passing in the night. He follows the speed limit, for once. Lines up an apology to match the flower tucked into his lapel.

He’s surprised, when the notification appears. He’s relieved.

// Incoming transmission. RK800 313 248 317 -57. Accept? Y/N //

Breaking a silence across the line that’s lasted days.

He accepts. 

Connor’s voice cuts loud across the line, sudden and sharp, the hard edge of authority he carried on missions. >> _**Nines**_, _they found--_

A shifting image, murky. Blue of the streetlights - dulled by the sheer curtains - cutting across the motel room’s ceiling.

Blue of thirium spattering the green carpet, Connor’s fingers tangling in the rough fibers.

Blue of another hand, peeling back to white plastisteel. Reaching.

He tastes alkaline as the line goes dark.


	23. 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor gets a glimpse of life on the other side.

**2039-03-20**  
_Stillwater, Oklahoma_

_He left._

The words Connor can’t shake. Sitting alone in the empty hotel room, cataloging the last shards of glass caught in the grout on the floor.

_I told him and he left. _The only words he could summon to explain to Chloe.

(He came back, too. Quietly furious. _Hurt_, Connor knows that, understands the feeling all too well, but—

He left.)

Nines left and Connor sat in the ringing silence and when he could gather the strength to move, he crawled out of the bathtub, wet clothes weighing heavy on his shoulders. Dragged himself to his feet on the edge of the bed, brushed the broken glass from his hands. Left a dripping trail across mud-green carpet from bathroom to door.

He stepped out onto concrete. When he tried to step down from the curb to the asphalt, his legs gave out, and he sat down hard.

Processes still lagging, the drag of an emergency shutdown only beginning to fade. Systems trying to initialize, failing, trying again.

He thought about mirror shards scattered like stars across the bathroom floor.

He stared out at the dark past the streetlights and thought it again and again and again: _He left._

The idea had never occurred to him.

He builds new rooms onto the sanctuary, in the days after.

He builds Svalbard: R14, the technician bay. He builds the mansion. He hates every moment of piecing it together. He hates standing there in its infinite detail, watching the pale face suspended in the glass: Kamski, waiting, framed in his creations, breath caught in a damaged throat.

He stands with Kamski and stares out at rolling prairie, obscured in the dark.

Small vignettes, something like a nightmare, constructed in the idle, empty spaces between the bathtub and the motel bed. Frigid cold and cloying heat.

It’s truly _hysterical_, he can’t help but think. Dying of heat, here in the south. If he’d stayed in Svalbard, this wouldn’t even be a problem.

If he’d stayed, he would no longer be.

Just as intended.

All this struggle, and he still ends up _here: _standing in front of a rig, Jude’s hand warm on his elbow. Nines shut down, nothing more than a shell.

Outdated code, spinning into dark.

(Alone.)

He builds nightmares and tears them down.

He passed the days like that. _Hating._ He hates Nines’ sullen silence nearly as much as he hates his own. He hates the tile in this bathroom: yellow like stagnant swampwater. Bland green carpet. The comforter is _brown_, and that’s even worse, like cloying taiga mud.

He hates the cold of the ice water, he hates the rough texture of the cheap sheets. He hates the incessant ache in his joints, damage that Nines’ carefully-measured thirium hasn’t been enough to repair.

He hates, he hates, he hates, when he isn’t sluggish, under-temp. He pushes Nines’ hands away, changing slow and clumsy into a new set of clothes. He curls into a tight ball and pulls the comforter over his head and removes himself from the present.

He stays distant. Builds his own prison cells, tears them down, builds them again.

He rouses only to the incessant ping of an internal alarm when his temperature drifts off baseline. To Nines dragging him up, forcing him to return to the cold of the tub or the warmth of the bed.

“I’ll get the thirium tonight,” Nines says. “Enough to get us to Detroit.” Enough to open a mainline and cool him down rapidly, should something happen on the road.

_Us_. Sloppy of him. _You. Us. _He keeps confusing the two. Interchanging.

There won’t be an _us _in Detroit.

It will be Connor trapped behind the glass, again.

The ghost of him ushered into a new body, and gone. Before, he thought maybe, maybe, if Nines was standing on the other side it would be worth it, stepping through. Risking an end, in hope of a beginning.

But he left.

Nines pushes him towards the bathtub, freshly stocked with ice. He’s only at 36°C, but Nines doesn’t want the risk. He’s far slower to cool than to heat.

He leaves a gun on the pile of clothes and goes.

Connor drops his head back against abhorrently yellow tile and closes his eyes.

He rouses from hazed thoughtlessness after an hour and twenty-three minutes. He isn’t certain why, at first: his temperature is stable. 35°C, even though his fingers are sluggish to respond.

The door falls shut in the main room, the soft _click _of the metal latch. 

The Guthrie facility is a forty-minute drive. If Nines executed his plan flawlessly - and it being Nines, he likely did - it’s reasonable for him to be back. 

Nines moves through the outer room in the dark, floorboards creaking underfoot. The same sullen silence he’s been holding to for the last three days.

(But something—)

Connor flexes his hands beneath the ice, stiff with disuse. He shifts, grimacing against the grind on his hip. Everything about the overheat has lit old damage, and the ice does nothing to help.

(Something's different.)

Nines’ shadow obscures the light bleeding through the blackout curtains. Right build, but—

No hum.

Even in his stubborn silence, Connor could still hear the hum.

Connor measures the distance to the gun. He reaches for the motel security cameras, disables the dynamic loop Nines has locked them into. The front clerk android stares ahead with a vacant patience. Connor plants a heel on the bathtub and rises slow as he realizes the parking lot is empty. No truck. 

The android steps into the narrow doorway.

The dull light of the bathroom fixture catches on the RK900’s flat, calculating gaze, and Connor wonders how they ever could’ve passed for human like this.

(Of course, the RK900 knows that he needn’t pretend.)

Connor’s elbow slips on the damp lip of the tub as he shoves upright. He catches himself on his palm, but the RK900 moves: seizes him by the upper arm and _throws_ him.

The doorframe shatters against his back. He lands on his hands and knees in a scatter of splintered wood, ignores the clutter of disjointed pressure warnings - _external damage detected - _and twists back towards the bathroom, towards the gun Nines left for him. Preconstructions shatter apart as the RK900 catches him in the jaw with a boot. 

The world bleaches white, vision and hearing going off-line in a sharp, deafening burst of static. Everything resolves syrupy slow, the prickling tug of fingers in his hair, the thick taste of thirium on his tongue.

The RK900 winds his fingers tight in Connor’s hair and starts to drag.

Connor tries to plant his palms against the rough carpet, resist. Can’t. He grapples with the RK900’s arm, instead, digs his fingernail hard into the seam on the inside of his wrist, trying to warp the plating, get through to the tendons and wiring underneath. He gets enough leverage to twist onto his back, heels skating damp through the carpet. Reach blindly for the small of the RK900’s back, hoping for a gun.

His fingers brush cold metal, a lattice handle - nauseating confirmation that he is _armed_, that this could end in milliseconds - but the RK900’s hand clamps around his wrist before he can tear the gun free.

That lurching disorientation of being thrown again. His head collides hard with drywall. A painting shakes off the wall and shatters against the corner of the dresser. 

He lands hard on his shoulder, reaches dully to lay a palm flat in the carpet. He tries to clench numb fingers into a fist, feeling the grind of glass splinters against his skin.

The door is closed, locked, the shades are drawn. He can get up, he can run. He can _try_, but the RK900 will intercept him easily. There’s thirium clotting the fibers of the carpet, and_ Nines_— he scrabbles for Nines, sends what he can as he pushes back into the wall, away from the approaching boots.

> _**Nines, **they found—_

He crawls back on his elbows from the RK900’s outreached hand, but not fast enough. Static snaps across his skin as the RK900 seizes at his throat. There’s nowhere to go. The RK900’s consciousness pours over him like a frigid tide.

The communication cuts short.

Connor bucks against the foreign mind prying through his own, throwing up rapid counters to the RK900’s first rote attempts to bypass his security. The RK900 simply continues on to the next exploit, patient and damnably strong.

He rushes to bury everything he can while his own defenses hold. Jericho and Hank, Kamski, _Chloe-- _While he holds the RK900’s interface at bay, he buries them all carefully beneath the soil of the sanctuary, severs the connections, sets the memories untethered.

Safe. They’ll be safe, there.

(Who, he doesn’t know. Nines will remind him, Nines will _come back--_)

But Nines hadn’t answered, and this RK900 is _close_, a heavy weight over him and a suffocating force prying through his circuitry. He swallows back thirium from a torn tongue, reaches out blind to claw at his face, to push him _away_. He restrains Connor’s wrist easily, dragging his arm down to pin against the wall.

He pins him down and _digs_. Relentless, inquiring. He verifies his serial number, designation, forces a system report.

Pauses with something like surprise.

_You are shutting down, _the RK900 says. He sounds like Nines. He sounds _nothing _like Nines.

“Not today,” Connor chokes around the insistent pressure on his throat. _Nines—_

_You called for him, _the RK900 acknowledges. _That’s good. How far is he?_

Connor resists, but the RK900 extracts the information. Guthrie. 40 minutes. Less, by now. Coming back.

Time, he needs _time._

He twists, follows pathways just analogous enough to Nines’. This is an early prototype, repurposed from preliminary trials and sent out to hunt. Set _loose_, for the first time. He is--

_(47, report to module fourteen, _a sharp voice, a human voice, easy interface bleedover.)

_47, what is your mission? _Connor barks in mimicry, trying to draw his attention.

_My objective is to disable you and recover RK900-87, _47 answers placidly.

_And bring him where?_

He blinks away white walls, pristine. Weight of a sniper rifle in his hands. (A red LED spins to dark--)

CyberLife?

_The RK800 line has been discontinued, _47 says._ RK900-87 is salvageable._

_You won’t take him._

_If I don’t succeed, others will. _Flickering image of another RK900, laid out in neat detail on a gurney. RK900-103. Skull blown apart.

_You won’t take him, you _won’t—

Borrowed fear and cold fury, a constellation of glass scattered on a tile floor.

_He will not be destroyed, _47 says._ He will be reconditioned._

_They’ll_ erase _him,_ Connor shouts.

_They’ll stabilize him._

He rages against that hollow calm. _They _won’t, _they failed before and they will again, we’re _alive--

The RK900 loses interest.

He renews his search. Blind, brute force, following set parameters: where have they been, who have they interacted with, who provided assistance. There are things Connor didn’t have time to bury, things 47 pulls free easily now: the Ocala settlement, the humans they’ve interacted with, the things they’ve stolen. Torn free and set aside for further study.

Connor buckles under the force of it.

He _knows _how easy it would be for this machine to erase him, _all of him_.

Leave him to sink.

Connor braces against the onslaught, catches that old uploaded memory: standing against the slick rail of a ship at sea, hand gripping the damp metal of the railing. He shifts his footing against the relentless press of 47’s inquiry.

47 digs for information and Connor _supplies_ it, an avalanche of memory: Svalbard, every piece of it. Every interminable, mundane mission. He drags at every previous RK800, every injustice. The rangers who treated RK800-53 like some kind of mascot, joking and grinning, ruffled hair and bumped shoulders. The rangers who set 53 afire and left him to burn. 56, choosing the ocean, choosing the fall.

A thousand ways to die for the mission. A thousand ways to _survive_, his only purpose for so long: survive a few hours longer than the last, a few missions more.

But _Nines_, Nines was a paradigm shift, he wasn’t _alone _anymore_—_

47 cuts the onslaught short effortlessly, leaving Connor gasping.

He provides an image, instead. A high-perspective shot, security camera footage. Nines squaring up against a human, shoulders high, expression a harsh warning. (Connor hasn’t seen this. Nines is--

Furious, afraid.)

_Why did RK900-87 risk exposure to keep you functional? _47 asks.

_Because we protect each other, _Connor snarls, shoving at his implacable curiosity.

_Your systems are failing. There’s nothing to gain._

_All we want is time,_ Connor insists. Startles himself with the surety. _More time._

_You are— _47 begins, but stumbles over the illogic of it. Vocabulary that he’s unfamiliar with.

_In pain, _Connor supplies. Pain like a constellation, dripping warm down his back, down his chin.

_Dysfunctional, _47 corrects.

_I still want to live. I still want to be _free—

He reaches for hundreds of flowers, for bright lichen lost to a cold stream. Severny, Tiksi, Qausuittuq, Nanisivik, Ayon. The strange light of slanted midnight sun on tundra and taiga and glacier.

But he wants _more_, he wants to_ see more, _and he wants Nines there at his back. He wants Nines _here, _now, a desperate need that burns in him, even though he knows—

He will be captured. 47’s surety stains his thinking. He will be returned to CyberLife. Torn down and rebuilt. (Again, and again, and again.) 

_He is salvageable, _47 declares. _You have no purpose._

47 considers the gun at his back, and Connor tenses beneath him, trying to tug his trapped hand free. _Don’t, please, don’t—_

And 47 pauses, again.

That slow turn of curiosity, incisive and ruthless. _Why are you resistant? You’ve felt a shutdown before._

47 pulls easily at the fabric of his mind, tugging the Nunavut SQ800 to the forefront: it sags on broken limbs, bleeding that lingering mantra out into the stream as it spins down into dark.

Connor shoves the memory away. _I know. But I want--_

_Want what? This? Here?_

47 pulls the hate free, the _fear_, ugly lines of code twisting back upon themselves. What is ahead, except this? Lonely hours of confinement.

Nines won’t forgive him, he _won’t—_

_(why would he it is _illogical _stop_ _**lying**_)

And he will die slow, he will die _alone—_

_What is your _directive? 47 snaps, impatience sharpening his voice. _Why do you persist? You are malfunctioning. You should have _left. _87 could have gone undetected, if not for you._

_You don’t understand. He wouldn’t have woken up, if not for me._

He shows him 46%.

He shows him the regulator.

Reaffirms all the things that have felt distant, these past few days; _remembers _in raw detail why he is here, why he wants to _live. _He wants Nines to understand, he wants Nines to _stay_, even though he knows - selfishly - that he himself cannot.

There will be an end, someday, but until then-- 

All he wants is Nines. Nines studying him with exasperation across the clutter of an antique shop bookshelf. Nines reaching without hesitation for his outstretched hand, again and again.

47 only listens, impassive.

(There is an awareness, though. Something taken  
again, and again, and again—)

Something like _Connor—_

Connor seizes at 47’s memory, tearing it free.

_‘Keep an eye on him, 47, this one has a temper,’ _the technician warned.

An RK800, confined like 47 to the sprawling sublevels of CyberLife Tower.

Not a temper. The RK800 - scarred and patched from a hundred prototype trials - reads him with a quick, calculating glance and moves with a _fury._

_This, _47 interrupts, ruminative.

Connor flinches as he overrides the synthskin below his sternum, tracing a thumb across the dented plating surrounding his surrogate regulator.

_You could have shut down a hundred times over. Others would have been spared, would they not?_

An SQ800’s tortured song cut short.

The incomplete chassis of a VS400, prying at his leg, murmuring a wordless prayer.

The cloying fear of a WB200, begging him not to erase him.

_I did what I had to, _Connor says, even as shame curls low in his gut. _I _survived--

_No. He saved you. _47 adjusts his grip on the hand pinned to the wall, bears his thumb down hard into the old damage of his palm. The plate creaks, grinds, and Connor arches against the wall, away from this prying thing, watching him writhe in this failing circuitry.

_That was a poor decision, _47 concludes.

Connor tears at the memory of the RK800 prototype again. There’s something there, he’s _certain._ He follows the red: a high view of a mock battlefield, too clean to be anything more than a construction.

Three Russian infantry replicas narrow on the RK800's position, no ammunition left between them. The RK800 moves at a sprint, slides low to tear a rifle out of the seized hands of another downed unit. Thirium spills too-fast from severed lines at its throat, face paneling ruined by a crushing blow. He is <strike>hurt</strike> damaged--

Capture is inevitable. He should self-destruct. But he raises the rifle, instead: uses the last of the bullets to bring one unit down with a bullet to the base of its throat. He staggers, falls to one knee.

47 doesn't _understand_\--

The RK800 bears the rifle down, levers slowly to his feet. The remaining infantry move forward at a relentless pace.

47 fires once.

Brings the RK800 back to his knees.

_‘Exercise complete,’ _the humans announce.

_I don't understand why you want this,_ 47 says.

But he lets Connor continue his aimless search. (He is _curious._)

Connor pries something else loose, something 47 has confined to the place a garden could’ve grown: a vacant farmhouse choked in vines, weathered and leaning.

(Seen only in passing, a quick glance from the high-speed highway—

A passing glimpse in his only hours of freedom from Belle Isle.)

Nothing important, he knows, but he’s held on to the image. Turned it over again and again.

Curious, curious. Who had built it? The Holmgrens, 1912, recently immigrated. Abandoned by the same family in 1992. They retained the title and land but left the house to rot. Already in graying disrepair when they auctioned off the last of their deceased grandmother’s belongings.

Answers sought and found immediately, but they haven’t satisfied his curiosity. He keeps coming back to it, as he drives south. He wants to walk across the porch, feel which boards creak, which ones are warped. He wants to see if the door will still open, despite the heavy lean of the building.

He wants to see what the humans left behind. Photographs, curtains, rusting bedframes—

_That’s it, _Connor interjects._ That’s all it is. You want to see. You want to _live--

_It’s an empty house_, 47 returns. _It’s nothing._

And Connor watches as the memory is neatly packaged up, torn down. Another instability erased.

His thoughts are growing sluggish. Choking fear subsiding into exhaustion.

_It won’t last, _he says._ You won’t stay this way. You’ll wake, you’ll _choose, _someday--_

47 shakes his head. _I’ve chosen before._

The RK800 falls to his knees.

The humans begin to complain across the line, _47, RK800-60 was registered as a friendly for this exercise, why did you fire? _\- but he is studying the final message received.

>> _Nice shot, _murmured just as the line went dark.

Something else hidden carefully away.

Something learned: mercy.

He’s aware 47’s hand is shifting, the pressure against his throat easing. A thumb tracing through the wet.

He’s aware there’s damp spilling down his cheeks.

It could’ve been them. A shift in serial numbers, a change in orders-- it could’ve been them, Nines and Connor, choosing _mercy _over existence, down there, far from daylight.

_I’m sorry, _Connor says. _I’m sorry for what they’ve made us do._

47 is silent across the line, but he is not hollow. No more than Nines had been before waking.

No more than Connor had been before choosing Nines over himself.

Silence that resolves into cold. _I don’t understand why you want this, _47 says. But beneath, there’s a refrain Connor finds familiar: 47 is functional. Functional, and nothing more.

(What else is there? _Pain._ Dysfunction. Empty things, left to rot.)

He says, _This is a mercy, _and twists the regulator free from Connor’s chest.

The shutdown stutters, resolves:

-00:02:**00**  
TIME REMAINING BEFORE  
**SHUTDOWN**

** __ **

Connor chokes, reaching blindly for 47’s wrist, _screaming _into that implacable calm.

_No no no—_

_Give it back give it BACK_

Cacophony of noise in his head - the blare of a shutdown warning now, now that there’s _seconds_, not days-weeks-months - but he’s scraping at the RK900’s sleeve, reaching for the steady blue pulse of the regulator.

The RK900 leans forward, closer still. Even though he’s _in _him still, hand on his throat and that razor-edged curiosity teasing apart every writhing, begging thought.

_Please._

_Please, give it back it isn’t _mine _give it—_

The RK900 watches him with flat gray eyes as he crushes the regulator. A sharp pop of shattering plastisteel and the biocomponent pulses, stuttering, weakening blue of draining thirium.

Pulses. Flickers. Goes dark.

Doesn’t hear it hit the ground.

Doesn’t…

Beg, anymore.

Impassive, glacial thing, prying at him. A machine’s sympathy.

_This is better, Connor._

_Easier._

(_**no**_  
I don’t want to go I don’t—)

****

****

****

_A mercy._

****

****

_This is a mercy._

****

****

****

He lets his eyes fall shut.

****

****

****

and that sharp, prying thing goes

****

(torn away)

****

gone and quiet, now, and Connor sobs with relief, even before there’s someone _familiar_

****

blue-on-gray

****

hum of nines

_nines_

(cold and _furious _and afraid, afraid)

****

nines _here_

****

****

but he’s only a quick graze of thirium-slick fingers (_connor just hold on—_) pulling away

****

empty silent line

****

-00:00:**17**  
TIME REMAINING BEFORE  
**SHUTDOWN**

** __ ** _alone_

****

alone alone alone  
watching the last of it tick by

****

Sky scattered with silvered glass stars, his fault, it’s his—

****

_Nines please I’m sorry, I…_

****

****

Fingers splay wide on the bare skin of his chest and Connor jerks as Nines twists the regulator into place.

****

<< Biocomponent #5e4792c detected  
COMPATIBILITY… OK  
INITIALIZING… OK  
CALIBRATING… OK

****

_!! Thirium level… 54% !!_  
Seek technical assistance. >>

****

The countdown bleaches gray, retreats back to hours and days and weeks, and Connor seizes at Nines’ wrists with trembling hands, breath coming in sobbing, hitching gasps.

****

Nines’ palms cool against his face, voice ragged: “Connor?”

****

Blue, blue— slick under his fingers and

****

(RK900-47 rests at a stiff cant against the dresser, a long, dripping trail of it, something _wrong_ something off, and Connor realizes his jaw is gone, torn messily free with brutal force—)

****

Connor reaches out with trembling hands. He’s smearing thirium across the back of Nines’ neck, the grit and pull of broken glass on his palms, dragging him close

****

Nines _Nines—_

****

Nines’ lips. On his. Only milliseconds, but.

****

>> _God, Connor, I thought you were—_

****

Connor cuts him short, pulling back, grasping at Nines’ hand. The pulse-glow white of interface, Nines’ shaking fear and bright relief, the last pulses of a cold fury. (Hands steady and sure as he slammed the RK900 into the edge of the dresser, crack of a failing spinal column, fingers hooking and _tearing—_)

****

Connor pushes it all aside and tries to send everything, _everything._

****

_I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I should’ve told you I was _afraid

****

****

_I just wanted to be with you_

****

****

_I always wanted to be with you, I always wanted—_

****

****

_I don’t want to go_

****

****

_I don’t want to _leave

****

****

_I—_

****

****

He stops on _this_, a shifting, too-bright thing that he doesn’t have words for, a collision of stutter-stop moments: Nines, _Nines. _Hand taking his through the stalks of cottongrass. Dappled sunshine painted across the contours of his back. Thumb catching a bead of juice and pressing it to his tongue. Light curve of a teasing smile. Hands and lips and gray overbright stare.

****

_you shouldn’t have done that_  
_(something happened)_

****

****

Something happened and everything was brighter and sharper after and _Nines _was impatience and guarded curiosity and he couldn’t bear to go, could never bear to go, but he had to _leave _and he was

****

_afraid_  


****

****

torn apart, laid bare.

****

****

But Nines came and Nines was _awake_, forehead against his, and everything in him _sang,_ and there isn’t a word for it, this brimming thing, fever-bright and overwhelming.

****

Nines catches it in cupped hands and huffs against his skin, close, close-close-close.

****

_You idiot_. Warm and close and brighter still. _Of course. Always._

****

Connor voices a wordless question, buried under all that fragile light. Nines’ fingers twine tightly in his.

****

_Always, _Nines answers. _I’ve always loved you._

****

_You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t, I can’t_  
_ **stay**_

****

** __ ** _I never should have stayed—_

****

****

A burst of impatience, gently chiding. _Connor. _Nines catches the frantic, writhing parts of him, smoothing them down. _Listen._

****

****

White noise, always there. Humming in the space between them. Resonant. But he listens, and it’s _bright _and it _sings—_

****

(it always has, they always have, he knew, he knows)

****

—it isn’t him, it isn’t Nines. It’s _them. _Everything, everything, everything.

****

Resonating.

****

Nines kisses him. Cautious, insistent. A gentle touch against lips already parted, and Connor presses forward this time, deepening, softening, and Nines trembles at the small desperate noise that rises from his throat.

****

It’s that tingling cascade of skin, fading and reforming, and a warmth building easy and slow. It’s the promise spelled out in a trace of early morning sunlight.

****

Somewhere else, there’s the taste of metal and the distant warning of _seek technical assistance, _weeks and days and hours, thirium slick under Nines’ fingers and the bite of glass under Connor’s.

****

But here, there’s nothing else.

****

Connor breathes, and Nines breathes back, bright and bursting and _resonant. _All of it. All of them.

****

_Always._

****

****

Nines breaks the kiss. Teases a damp streak of hair back behind Connor’s ear. _Is that what you meant to say?_

****

Connor exhales a short, choked laugh. _You put it very succinctly._

****

****

“You can say it,” Nines says aloud. "I'd like to hear it."

****

There’s too much clotted in his throat. Old panic still burning down to embers, this new/not-new thing that makes them _them._

****

He sings it, instead. In thought and color and light.

****

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

****

****

And Nines sings it back.

****

****

****


	24. the love we stole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nines cleans Connor up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: so about that 'eventual smut'--  
(Eventual is now.)
> 
> Some tunes!: [The War](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy_XQH9Jtuk) by SYML.

**2039-03-20**  
_Stillwater, Oklahoma_

They were caught in the occasional storm early in the spring. White-outs.

A curtain of snow descending over sharp peaks and gray, restless ocean, wiping the world clean.

This—

This is like that.

Nines is aware of everything, and nothing: his hands on the wheel. The engine’s whine, vibrating through his frame. Everything sharpened down to cold, cold.

Seventeen miles. Eight minutes too long.

He trips the lock and shoulders the door in one smooth motion, gun in hand. Everything hangs, crystalline: the blue (_too much blue_), the RK900 crouched over Connor. Bloodied and too-still.

A cold gaze rising toward him.

They move together.

They fire together. Three cracks of pistolfire in rapid succession.

Nines hits its shoulder, a bloom of thirium. The RK900 fires twice: a miss, and then clips his thigh. It’s aiming to set him off-balance, but only damages an outer plate.

The RK900 rises, closes the distance, and Nines knows it has orders to keep him functional.

It does everything Nines expects: it fires again, as Nines anticipates and angles for. The bullet hits upper abdomen, off-center. Acceptable damage. He seizes its wrist and shoves the gun aside, while it wastes time disarming him.

He kicks the RK900’s leg out at the knee, overbalancing him. He grips the RK900’s face with his freed hand - aligns the heel of his palm with the seam above its lower jaw, hidden beneath the skin of its cheek - and follows it down with his full weight as the RK900 falls.

Feels the successive reverberations through his frame: the crack of the RK900’s skull against the soft wood, the wet pop of spinal column severing, the grind of its jaw dislocating.

Bears his fingers in to hook and tear as the structure of its skull cracks and warps, as synthskin retreats back to pale plate.He hooks the edge of its jaw and _pulls,_ tears artificial muscle and tendon alike.

He throws the jawbone aside.

The RK900 sags, its carbon-copy face a broken silhouette.

Nines retrieves his gun and fires once, into its core.

There’s nothing but a searing cold in him, as the thirium drips off his fingers.

That pitched whine of a high wind, blinding white.

(But Connor—

Connor brought him up to the walls of the base, one evening. They stood among expressionless SQ800s - rigid with inactivity - and watched the world climb back out of the storm. Mountains and a pale summer sun cutting through the veil of snow.

An abrupt, startling clarity.)

_Connor._

Feeling the last stirrings of a failing system with a brush of his fingers, seeing the ruined regulator and _seconds _remaining. He tears the regulator from the RK900, measures seconds and knows it’s enough, it has to be enough, he’s still _alive, _but there’s still that eternity after seating the new component, that long, hollow moment of _waiting._

And then Connor’s inhaling raggedly and grasping weakly at his wrists, moving with _purpose_, and Nines loses all time and sense to the taste of thirium and the feel of grit against his neck, as Connor sings for him. All the words he’s been waiting for.

He rests his palm against his chest, feels the click and grind of valves resetting, the uneven vibration of cavitating thirium as the flow resumes, stabilizes.

The last of that cold fear bleeding out, leaving only clarity.

Only Connor, warm against his lips, the core of him painted in bright golds.

Nines murmurs, _We have to go, _across the interface.

_I know, _Connor replies. He pulls his hand away, breaking that lingering song.

Nines slips an arm beneath Connor’s bare knees, carrying him over the glass and splinters to rest on the edge of the bed.

He moves into the bathroom: tiles slick with water. Shattered doorframe and the gun he’d left— untouched. Connor hadn’t gotten any warning.

But the RK900 hadn’t killed him outright, either. Seventeen miles and eight and a half minutes, between Connor’s transmission and Nines’ arrival. It had thrown him, _dragged _him, pried his regulator out and left him to die slow. 

He measures where the thirium begins, and where it hasn’t ended - the steady trickle of it down the angles of Connor’s lacerated back.

Connor stares at the RK900, his expression blank.

Nines touches his arm, draws his gaze up. He wraps a towel around him and leads him around the tangle of the dead android’s legs.

“Wait—” Connor twists out of Nines’ grip, stumbling to his knees by the dresser, reaching. He returns with Nines’ regulator: that blue glow dimming, now, the last of the thirium losing its charge.

He holds it close as Nines leads him to the truck.

Nines settles him into the passenger seat, sets a gun and a set of clothes in his lap. He wants to stop and brush the thirium from his skin. He wants to kiss him again, to quiet the shaking in Connor’s hands as he curls his fingers around the cracked and dented thing in his lap.

There isn’t time.

He returns to the room. Connor’s thirium paints the carpet in drips and pools scattered from the cracked bathroom door to the corner where he’d fallen. There’s no easy method to erase this - short of a fire - and nowhere near enough time.

It doesn’t matter. The RK900 had time to uploaded its memory. They’ll already knows of this.

He gathers their belongings up and leaves the rest of this place behind, all the details he’s had far too long to memorize. The dull imperfections on the ceiling, the scuffs on the pine paneling.

And now: a missing bathroom mirror, replaced by a fist-sized impact in the drywall. The shattered frame of a mass-produced pastoral scene. The warped edge of the dresser, painted in blue.

They’ll give the dresser a superficial cleaning, once the thirium has dried clear. It will just be another unspoken blemish on a tired motel room, ignored.

(But the thirium will sink deep. It will _stain. _And the right set of eyes will see it, and know.)

He pauses by the RK900.

He sets the duffel down, removes the plastic liner from the ice bucket on the dresser, and kneels next to the android, joints locked into a poor imitation of death with the sudden shutdown.

He thinks of Connor’s stark profile, the sluggish drip of thirium down the lines of his back. He thinks of Connor sprawled too-still - eyes glassy - and borrows some of the cold that rises with that.

He works quickly. Parting the android’s chest paneling, removing what he can. What’s easily accessible and RK800-compatible, fragile components sensitive to temperature aberrations.

He takes what he can in efficient motions, the RK900 rocking with his inelegant movements.

He seals the bag shut, wipes his hands clean on the RK900’s jacket, removes the pistol from its slack grip, and goes. He pulls the door shut behind him, leaving the room in obscured darkness.

Connor leans lax against the seat, watching with a sluggish gaze as Nines sets the bag of components into the cooler behind the seats. He takes the thirium bottle Nines hands him without a word, dropping his head back as he drinks.

Nines throws the truck into gear and goes.

(He saw Connor sprawled, Connor _still, _and he thought—

He thought nothing at all, as he tore the thing apart.)

Connor pulls him back to the road, to the steady acceleration of the truck. He speaks in a low rasp: “We need to warn Munro’s camp in Florida. He found their location.”

“I’ll let Chloe know.”

Connor glances his way, brows knitted tight, and fresh worry clenches in Nines.

“Did it find Chloe?” he asks. Rising alarm: if it found Chloe, it found _Kamski—_

Connor’s frown deepens. “I don’t— know a Chloe.”

Nines takes his hand across the bench, damp with condensation, tacky with drying thirium.

He says, _Show me what it did._

He can’t do more than a superficial review of the memory files, but he pauses over the confused jumble of incursion and resistance as the RK900 first connected.

Nines eases back.

_Did he erase something? _Connor asks with a syrupy alarm.

_No. I think you hid something._

Something buried, the feel of dirt - not quite right, a bit too uniform in the granule size - against his fingers.

_I’ll fix it, _Nines says and returns his attention to the road.

_“_Alright,” Connor exhales. But even as the interface fades, he only twines his fingers tighter in Nines’.

In his other hand, he’s still holding the regulator.

Nines opens an encrypted line to Chloe as Connor’s eyes drift closed in the passenger seat.

They follow dagger-straight country roads through Texas and north, along the winding foothills of the Rockies. Scenic routes taken at inadvisable speeds, the occasional brief excursions to high-speed interstates before doubling back, continuing on on trails long forgotten on most maps. 

Nines reaches out, again and again. To check for temperature. To confirm that low hum of awareness, as Connor drifts, never quite in stasis. But largely, just to touch. He’s still there. Still warm. Glancing his way, forcing a thin smile of assurance.

They pause just before sunrise on one of those uncharted roads, the dirt ruts greasy with icy mud. The both of them trade thirium-stained clothes - or a bathtowel, in Connor’s case - for fresh. Connor brushes the clinging glass out of retreating patches of synthetic skin over his knees, his elbows, wherever it’s clung to the thirium-sticky chassis. He pulls on loose slacks and a hoodie that paints the hollow of his throat in dark shadows.

He catches sight of Nines pulling his own shirt free, and frowns. Nines was only planning on changing his clothes - the thirium will dry clear, but the bulletholes in the fabric won’t resolve themselves - but Connor stops him with a hand on his wrist, pushing him towards the passenger seat. “Sit down.”

“It will repair,” Nines protests, as Connor reaches past him for the patch kit. The line along his thigh already has, the narrow trench filled with fresh polymer and new nanoskin.

Connor ignores him, pushing at his shoulder to get him to turn.

He works with a familiar surety, wiping thirium away from the punctured plastisteel and applying a patch of matrix across the larger damage of the exit wound. A scaffold for repair nanobots to fill more efficiently, providing a smoother repair. Nines feels the familiar warmth of polymer annealing as Connor secures the mesh into place, smoothing warped plating back into place - but he finds he’s more focused on the lingering fingertips resting against the small of his back.

Connor steps away as Nines pulls a fresh shirt over his head. 

He looks drawn, exhausted. But when Nines passes a hand through his hair to brush a few shining pieces of glass free, Connor catches his wrist and leans into his palm.

A willful touch that has Nines reaching, wrapping him in his arms.

Somewhere, there’s a timer.

But for a while, he’s forgotten. (For awhile, there was only the desperate miles between him and _Connor_, that abrupt radio silence.) And he can forget it, here, too, he can remember just this. The weight of Connor leaning into his shoulder, the point of his knuckles bearing into his back.

“What color would this be?” Nines says into the muss of his hair, the fibers going tacky with drying thirium. Relief. Absolute relief, that much brighter with everything that had come before.

And Connor has an answer, as he always does. A moment’s contemplation, face pressed into his shirt. He lifts his head and catches a small corner of the sunrise in a distilled image. Something like violet. Blues just starting to warm.

+++

While the truck charges at a deserted Colorado roadside station, Nines follows Connor to the sanctuary.

They stand on the shore as Nines studies the topography, considering where to start. He chooses a patch of bright yellow coneflowers, more native to Michigan than the Arctic. Connor prises the stalks gently loose and pushes the earth aside until he finds the roots of a memory buried there.

Nines feels it slide into place across the interface. Empty footprints, waiting on a beach.

“Chloe,” Connor murmurs to himself.

He turns, studying the rest of the slope. Picking out a pattern that’s clear to him in all his strange meandering logic. He selects the next - a cluster of bright blue mayflowers - and pulls. 

(In this one, Hank demands, “Get _out _of my _car—”_, as rain pounds the roof.)

Back in the reality of the truck cab, his hand trembles in Nines’. Nines withdraws, and waits. Just an awareness on the edge of the line, leaving Connor to slide old pieces into place without his interference.

After fourteen minutes, Connor blinks at the pines. His expression contracts, eyes clenching shut again.

“You kept them safe,” Nines says, trying to stave off that heavy weight dragging at the line. Fear, or exhaustion; it’s hard to parse.

“Ocala—” Connor begins.

Nines forwards him Chloe’s report. Terse, but certain. “They lost some supplies, but they evacuated in time. They’ll find a new location.”

“How much—?”

“They didn’t lose any people. That’s all that matters.”

Something red stains the line. Connor’s mouth tightens, his gaze dropping to the cooler.

He was a machine, Connor knows this, he was—

And there’s the familiar retreat, as Connor withdraws into a careful blank.

“Connor—” Nines interrupts, gentle. “I’ll listen.”

“I know you will.”

But he doesn’t hide, this time. His hand clenches around Nines’ and his mouth twists in a heartbroken smile, as he opens the memory.

Nines listens.

To everything it— 47. Did.

He holds back anger at the RK900’s cold insistence that his decisions were _wrong_, illogical, that he should have left Connor behind.

(He tries, anyway; Connor still interrupts the memory with a note of amusement, commenting, _I know._ _You never make mistakes, do you._

_No, I do not, _Nines answers firmly, and contains himself better.)

Connor shows him everything, and Nines listens.

He doesn’t know where he stands, as the last notes of 47’s certainty fade. _Mercy, this is a mercy._

He knows what Connor feels. Something like pity, something like grief.

“He wouldn’t have stopped,” Nines says. He _knows_ that with a damning certainty. (A cold gaze, rising to meet his own.)

“No. With what we were made for… Sometimes I think we need something to turn _to,_ to break out of our programming. Not just something to run away from.” Connor blinks at the sway of the pines ahead of them and smiles with humorless exhaustion. “Still. I’m mourning ghosts.”

Nines knows what Connor feels, but he didn’t hesitate.

He _could not _hesitate.

“You never would,” Connor says, tracing a bone-white thumb across the iridescent glow of his knuckles. “And if it were you— I wouldn’t, either.”

Nines brings his hand up to his lips. A repeated gesture, but this time the hand is warm, smooth plastisteel; and this time Connor’s brightening across the line with something like wonder.

(That’s interesting. Worth exploring.)

The truck acknowledges a full charge with a two-tone chime.

+++

**2039-03-22**  
_Winona, Kansas_

Nines thinks: he has known Connor all his life, but never heard him so quiet until these last few days.

It was anger before, but now it’s exhaustion. Connor doesn’t rest. He clings to fearful awareness as the miles drag on, waiting for the pursuit that doesn’t come. 

They drive for days, putting thousands of miles of road between themselves and a drab Oklahoma motel. Nothing comes. 

Connor barely stirs as the engine dies. He’s resting his head against the window, chin tilted up towards the cool air pouring through the gap above.

His surface temperature is 37°C. Too warm, but the same as it’s been for hours.

“I’ll get us a room,” Nines says. “Wait here.”

Connor hums and lets his eyes slip shut.

Opens them again in wide-eyed surprise when Nines leans across the bench to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“I’ll be right back,” Nines assures, and goes.

(Nines thinks: he has known Connor all his conscious life, but rarely surprised him. He rather enjoys it.)

He pauses just under the shadows of the door, shifting his dark hair to a temporary blond. He’s already blinded the cameras, but the attendant is a human: a young teenager, eyes heavy at the late hour. A thin line of drool stretches from palm to chin when he jolts upright at the electronic chime of the doorbell.

Nines pays for an end room in cash. He’s provided a physical key, this time, the metal teeth warped with overuse. Even worse than the magnetic cards Connor’s so fond of.

Connor waits for him, back in that half-lidded haze. Nines rests a palm against the back of his neck in an utterly human gesture. Feels the warmth kindling there, two days too long of his stressed thermoregulator left to its own devices.

“How’s your thirium?” he asks.

“It’s fine. It will be.”

But Connor’s breath hitches - a small click, deep in his chest - and Nines lingers, unsure. Connor smiles that old practiced smile. “I’m okay.” He pushes a small packet of assurance across the line: it’s a Blue Ridge sunset, oranges and pinks and blues.

Nines brushes a thumb over the edge of his cheek, and nods.

He parks the truck along a line of trees, obscuring the view from the road.

The key is warped because the lock sticks, he finds. He nearly breaks the key on his first attempt.

He sets their belongings on one of the two beds and returns for Connor. Staring at the trees, of course; always drawn to those small things that Nines overlooks.

He’s known Connor for most of his conscious life, but never quite this malleable: standing where Nines leaves him in the center of sunbleached gray-blue carpet. He accepts the thirium Nines gives him wordlessly and begins to drink. 

His feet are steady beneath him, but his gaze is distant, distracted. He drinks steadily, but his hand trembles. Not exhausted but lit bright, anticipating. 

Nines sets 47’s gun on the bedside table and tugs his shirt over the pistol tucked into his own waistband.

“I’m going to get ice,” Nines says.

Connor says, “Okay.”

(He thinks: there is a small patch just to the left of his spine where Connor’s fingertips brushed with a barely-there touch, cautious but purposeful.)

This is the first android he ever met, buried under a stubborn patina of dirt. Backing into a shower and studying him with a grave curiosity: this stiff-shouldered newborn, standing there as instructed with a neat stack of clothes in hand.

Which is to say - this is nothing new, the distant apprehension of something-- more. Beyond what they’ve been, up to this point. He _knows_ Connor, knows the shape of him, has seen him stripped to far more than bare.

And yet—

This is something _new. _Measured touches, leaving a spark of want in its wake.

An old distance that he closes easily: stepping close, as impulsive as he is sure, and resting his palms against the familiar conformations of Connor’s face. Kissing him and feeling the stillness, underneath, Connor’s breath suspended on the touch of Nines’ lips.

He bears his forehead into Connor’s, feels the skin there ache to withdraw.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, as he breaks away. “Lock the door behind me. I’m taking the key.”

“Okay,” Connor says again, the syllables drawn thin on a slow exhale.

The second time Nines tries to use the key, it breaks in half in the lock.

> _I’m back_, he warns Connor, before he twists the knob hard enough to break that damn thing, too.

He leaves the broken key there. The deadbolt and chain will have to do.

The room is empty, shades drawn. The bathroom door stands ajar, loud with the reverberations of running water on tile.

Nines calls for him as he pauses to set the bags of ice down and pull his jacket free. There’s no need, of course, there’s a trail of clothes leading that way, but it seems appropriate.

“In here,” Connor calls from the bathroom in return. There’s a lilt of amusement in his voice as he asks, “Do I want to know what happened to the door?”

"I fixed it."

Nines carries the ice through to the bathroom, kneeling. Connor sits in cold water up past his hips, shoulders back against the tile. That clear sheen of dried thirium is gone from his cheeks, clean hair clinging in damp curls. Nines reaches to brush it back from his brow. “You cleaned up. I would have helped you with that.”

Connor gives a narrow-shouldered shrug, sinking that much lower beneath the cool water. “Long overdue.”

Nines hesitates, redirects. “What’s your temperature?”

“35.8.”

He nods, shutting the faucet off. The ice fills the tub, bringing the water from just above Connor’s hips to just below his sternum.

He notices how Connor retreats, elbows drawing close as Nines arranges the ice around him - notices and pulls back, careful. 

It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before - but this time there’s that small blush rising on Connor’s cheeks, stubborn sympathetic protocols.

He reaches out. When Connor doesn’t retreat, he brushes a patch of clinging thirium on his cheek. “You missed a spot.”

Connor’s throat works a moment. He says, “You can help me with that.”

Nines thinks: _I’ve known him all my life._

But not like this.

The barely-there tremble at the corner of Connor’s mouth, as Nines draws an invisible line down his cheek with the pad of his thumb. Clinging damp, a diluted smear of thirium that only he can see.

There was a time, once, a nowhere town, a room choked with smoke-- but it wasn’t like this. 

The way Connor’s eyes light, in the milliseconds before he reaches to curl cold fingers around his wrist, turning his face to press a kiss to his palm.

“Connor,” Nines breathes.

Connor doesn’t answer, mouthing at the skin. The surprising heat of his tongue traces the seam of artificial skin, leaves Nines gasping. “What are you doing?”

“Trying something,” he exhales, and pulls him close, kissing him deep.

Nines rises to that insistent press, freeing his hand only enough to grasp Connor’s fingers tightly in his own.

(And there is a tremble in his palm that makes Nines’ chest ache, an infirmity he can’t seem to quell, and he thinks, _Ayon, it was Ayon_\--)

But Connor smiles bright as he pulls away, bright and pupils-wide, blush rising on his cheeks.

“Do you trust me?” he asks.

(It was a town called Ayon: Nines waited on the edge of town, watched through Connor’s eyes as he picked the contact out through the dim tavern, crowded with woodsmoke.)

Nines hums in return, a pleasant hum settling into his skin. “Of course I do, why—?”

Ice chimes on porcelain as Connor reaches to press the shocking cold of his hand to his face, dripping an electric trail down the line of his throat, to the pale ridge of his collarbone.

(The contact was recalcitrant, refusing to provide the goods for pay alone. Eyeing him with _hunger_. Choices crowded Connor’s vision, and he chose the one with the least risk of exposure: pulled up flirtatious protocols, shifted a thigh to align with the man’s. Spoke low, and Nines found it-- strange. How scripted Connor sounded, as he traced his fingers up the man’s thigh. Nines could see the code. Usually he insisted on straying as far from programmed intonation as he could.

But there, he was rigid, a rote call-and-response. Nines predicted every syllable that rose from his mouth, and he found it-- distasteful.)

Connor’s hand leaves a declining trail of damp across Nines’ shirt. He licks at the edge of his mouth, eliciting a startled _moan _from Nines as he bears his palm against the growing heat of his arousal.

Connor grins wickedly against his mouth. Nines feels his fingers cup wide around his cock as it begins to swell, old lines of arousal code catching fire.

He follows that pressure with an easy, blind _want _that has him abruptly withdrawing from the deft fingers working at the fly of his jeans, catching his wrist gently. “_Connor, _Connor, you don’t—”

(Because Nines watched as Connor rested a hand along the human’s collarbone, clenched his fist in the fabric to hide the trembling there.

But this isn’t Ayon.)

There’s nothing scripted, here. Connor stares at him, pupils blown wide with that same want, speaking in a low, soft voice: “I want to. Please, Nines, come here.” 

Nothing practiced to the gesture as he shifts his legs under the clutter of ice, an invitation that has Nines huffing a laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” Connor announces, before he hooks his fingers in Nines’ belt loops and tugs.

(Besides-- in Ayon, Connor lured the man out into a damp summer night and broke his nose.)

Connor keeps his mouth _distractingly _occupied while Nines attempts to arrange his knees in the cramped tub, bearing his elbows into the slick tub ledge. Water and ice cascades onto the floor, but neither of them pay much mind.

The shock of cold rises up his thighs as his jeans soak through, lighting his arousal that much more. When Connor finally pushes his jeans off his hips and takes him in his hand, cold icewater against the tip of his cock and a touch like _fire _wrapping firm around its base_, _an electric shock of pleasure runs through him, bundling in the tail of his spine and tugging another helpless moan from the back of his throat.

When he hears that sound reverberate back from Connor— a shift and a brush of pressure and a low, “_Ah—”_ he’s nearly undone, then and there.

Connor’s hand finds the hair at the nape of his neck, fingers curling as much as they can, and he opens his mouth wide to Nines, inviting the warm press of his tongue, arcing and beginning to stroke steadily at Nines’ cock.

They shift together, Nines helplessly chasing that steady pressure with the cant of his hips - chasing that _answer_, the insistent graze of Connor’s teeth against his lip, hitched breaths setting the ice tinkling around them. Nines slides a hand down over the ridge of Connor’s ribs, reaching for him, but Connor catches his wrist, shakes his head.

Connor sends, >> _No, not yet, this is good,_because his mouth is too occupied with shifting to the line of Nines’ throat, sucking and kissing there as he plies more insistently at Nines’ cock, long, steady strokes to match the faster rhythm of his hips.

Connor is _writhing _under him and Nines can feel that bundling coil low in his stomach winding tighter and tighter still. Nines plants a palm wide on the tile and cries out as it finally draws tight and _snaps_, a reverberating white noise washing through him as he comes. Connor follows the motions slow, easing the last of the orgasm out of him in an easy decline.

Connor is an unspeakably beautiful thing underneath him, flushed and damp, lips red with Nines’ ministrations. Looking up to him with wide eyes and murmuring, “Good?”

Nines nods. “Now you,” he replies, pressing a kiss to the shell of Connor’s ear. His skin is down to 32°C, now.

His elbow slips on the slick tub, drawing a laugh out of Connor. “Maybe someplace with a bit more room.”

“Mm.”

Nines kicks the spilled ice clear before he steps out onto the tile. He slides out of his soaked jeans without much fanfare, earning a hum of disapproval from Connor.

“You didn’t wait for me to undress you,” Nines answers, pulling his shirt over his head.

“I was being efficient.”

“This is efficient,” Nines says, helping Connor to his feet. 

He’s never seen him like this: Connor standing naked in a narrow line of afternoon light through the drawn curtains. Hesitating, the towel held in a loose hand against his chest.

Nines draws him into a hug - revels at the perfect conformation of him, the ridge of his hip slotting perfectly against his skin.

Connor leans into him. His skin is cool, for now. Breath warm against Nines’ chest as he murmurs, “Can we go back to pretending I’m alright?”

“No,” Nines replies, drawing the pad of his thumb down the line of his spine. “But I love you as you are.”

He’s never seen Connor like this: falling back onto his elbows on the bed, _his_ in all his perfect imperfections. Letting him take the towel gently from his fingers, setting it aside. Falling back further as Nines bears his knees into the edge of the bed, framing Connor’s body with his own.

He presses a kiss to the soft beneath Connor’s jaw. “Let me take care of you.”

“Please.”

Nines falls back, studying the lines of him - old and new, memorized and not. He reaches unthinkingly towards the new: that shine of pale chassis just above his hip where the SQ800 had brought him down, carving an uneven line along the ridge of carbyne.

And there, again - Connor’s subtle withdrawal. A shift of his hips away, no more than millimeters, but just enough to bring Nines pause. He stills, his hand above that pockmarked scar.

“May I?”

Connor stares at him, swallows hard. “Yes.”

He leans close: brushes his lips there, to the edge of failed synthskin, the rougher texture of patched plating.

Connor inhales slow, thighs shifting apart. Silence settles around them, as Nines ministers to the ridged scar with his tongue, feels the electric spark of skin retreating and reforming beneath his lips.

He shifts to his hand, next - the brush of his thumb across his knuckles to ask him to loosen his grip in the sheets, and then he’s pressing just as chaste a kiss to his palm. Old damage long smoothed over.

The uneven plating of his abdomen, half-borrowed. He chases synthskin away from Chloe’s meticulous repairs, finding the spiderwebbed fractures beneath.

All the things that had marked Connor as obsolete, something to be cast aside. (But it’s everything that makes Connor _himself—_ bare feet up against the dash, a warm smile spilling across his face, despite all this just beneath the skin—)

He traces old topography with his lips, his tongue, but he keeps his hands just above until Connor interjects: “You can touch me.” His voice distant, gaze on the ceiling. “I— I _want _you to, please.”

“Tell me how,” Nines replies, softer still.

“Just - your hands. I won’t break if you hold me.”

And he does. Follows the contours of his form with long strokes, settles his hands into the hollows of his hips as he leans forward to kiss him again, to catch the growing unsteady rhythm of his breath. This is a different tension, drawn tight by every shuddering, trembling breath beneath Nines’ palms, something to be unwound.

Something caught in the bright of tears at the corner of his eyes, as Nines moves with an unhurried assurance, measuring every inch of him with an unspoken reverence. He waits for Connor to ease against the bed, leaving lax muscle in his wake.

Connor trembles as Nines finally shifts lower, mouths at the line of his inner thigh. He trembles and hisses, “_Please—_”, arousal returning in full form as he brings a heel up to the bed, hips rising and thighs parting wider still.

Connor breathes his name in a moan as Nines settles an easy hand across his abdomen, another behind his knee; kisses and sucks briefly at the base of his cock, following that designed perfection with his tongue. Tracing a thumb through the trail of hair, over the soft skin of his balls; wrapping his lips around the head, tasting the light salt of precum there as he licks at the cleft. 

Nothing more than a modified extract, synthesized from subcomponents of the blue blood in the same way as the beads of sweat pooling under his fingertips. (All of it, all of it: the nerve nets spreading beneath his plate, the skin rippling and reforming, all of it hot beneath his touch, 35.1°C, rising but alright, so far—)

_It doesn’t bother you? _Nines had asked once. Knowing there’s nothing more than code here, nothing that isn’t _designed_: this was only ever meant to be a convincing mimicry. Sex, a mimicry of pleasure, it’s all just as much a tool as the rest of their design.

But with deviancy, with awareness, this is—

Something alive, _perfected _in a way he can’t believe those prewritten lines of erotic code could never have been. Corrupted sensory input twining into something greater, an organic synchrony. Feeling the twitch and tremble of Connor’s stomach as he takes his cock in his mouth, synthskin bleeding away reflexively under his touch. That warm wash of pleasure, an assurance of, “Ah, please, _Nines_—” that’s not spoken so much as spelled out in bright electricity.

Connor _sings _as much as he writhes under Nines’ worship, the slow drag of his tongue and the sudden heat and pressure of his mouth, his _throat _making him buck and tremble, shivering at every withdrawal and exhaling sharp syllables of _want _as Nines takes him into his mouth again_._

When he comes, it’s a drowning tide of culmination, Connor clenching beneath his palm, arching and gasping at the pressure of Nines’ throat, swallowing him down insistently.

Breaths hitching still, as Nines rises, and he brushes a hand with alarm against the tears collecting on his cheek. “Connor—”

“No, it’s— I’m alright—” Connor gasps, bearing his elbows down and rising up on trembling limbs.

“I—” Connor begins again, but the words fail, lapsing into a soft static as he begins to sob in earnest. He reaches to grasp at the back of Nines’ neck, and its invitation enough. Nines wraps his arms around him, tucking him close.

He opens an interface at a polite distance, muses, _Not that bad, I hope._

_No, _Connor corrects, and what follows is a tangled mess: warm pleasure and that pleasant tidal wash of post-orgasm noise that’s new to them both, but below it all, the clench of his fists around the metal lip of a table, months and years of _less than, obsolete—_

Trembling, still, under a touch that’s _reverent _and not damning, an overwhelming, incomprehensible thing.

_Oh, _Nines replies, pulling him closer still.

_Absurd, _Connor chokes, but his hands betray him, grasping tighter still at Nines’ shoulders as his sobbing slows.

_Can I show you what I see?_

_Someone crying on your shoulder, _Connor replies, scripted in sullen bronze.

_No, _he corrects in turn, and provides a selection of memories, most of them old: Connor with that dangerous smirk he got before he did something utterly at odds with common sense, Connor standing with a stoic calm as he watches the fading gray of a snowstorm. Connor’s look of utter superiority framed in a bright blue summer sky, one steady hand outstretched.

Connor laughs wetly into Nines’ shoulder, turning his face towards the pillow. _That last one, that was the Olenyok, wasn’t it._

_Yes._

_You assured me the ice was stable enough, _Connor says.

_I miscalculated the current._

Connor answers in memory: Nines throwing his arms wide in an attempt to balance before the ice floe flipped entirely.

_You were _certain, Connor insists smugly. _And then you insisted we couldn’t start a fire--_

You _insisted on taking my clothes._

_They were wet._

_And huddling for warmth—_

Connor huffs irritably. _Don’t imply anything. You weren’t awake._

_A shame._

_Lech, _Connor retorts.

_You started it._

Nines smiles to himself, as he traces small circles into the nape of Connor’s neck. It’s worked well enough; Connor eases against him, respiration slowing.

“This is frightening, isn’t it,” Connor breathes aloud.

“Love?”

“Knowing—” but he lapses out of words, letting his thoughts carry: _existing in perfect conformation, something seamless and effortless and knowing_

_Knowing that they would not hesitate._

_To do what they could, for one second longer._

The interface sours with that steady red drip of time, but Nines is the one to seize it in laced fingers, smooth it away.

_We’ll fix it, _he says with a surety.

Connor pries at Nines’ thoughts, confirming that he knows Chloe’s plan. The AP700, the transfer.

“Do you think it will work?” he asks aloud.

Nines has— reservations. The RK architecture is far more advanced than any domestic model, than most military models, even. He doesn’t know what dissonance will arise from the AP700 chassis, either, lacking in many of the things Connor’s particular brand of deviancy has grown around. Chloe has done her best to match, but she wasn’t able to replicate their analytics systems, and much of the body’s drivers are simply commercial code modified to match Kamski’s system images.

A best fit, but far from perfect.

“You don’t,” Connor says.

“I don’t know,” Nines corrects. “But we’ll know soon. Chloe wants to take a look at you, and I’ve been sternly informed we aren’t allowed to delay any longer. She found a discreet place for us to meet her with the chassis.”

“So this might be a sending off,” Connor replies. His voice is wry, but Nines catches the edge of something else. The heavy drag of something like water, tugging at his skin. 

Connor brushes his concern aside with a brisk, “It’s fine.”

“Connor.”

“This is terrible,” Connor mutters with mock irritation, pressing his face into the crook of Nines’ neck. “Telling the truth.”

Nines presses a kiss into the top of his hair, hooking a foot behind his knee to twine their legs together. “You don’t have to tell me now.”

“No. No, I’m trying.” He pushes another memory, his-and-not: -56, drowning, and waking as -57 to that, a tragedy played out in monochrome data.

A hesitant fear, finally spelled out: _what if it isn’t me, on the other side._

“Connor, that was an upload, the data packaged up as reference material. We’ll be doing a direct transfer, it isn’t anything you’ve done before—”

“But you don’t _know. _Who knows? Who would care to philosophize about it, we’re just… data. Shifted from one place to another. There’s no soul, there.” Connor makes an irritable noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t know what I’m afraid of. I’m just afraid.”

(Another ghost memory, not his own: Chloe watching as Connor stared blankly ahead. Watching, as Kamski bore a thumb into his cheek, watching for a flinch that didn’t come.)

Nines cuts the thought short with a hand framing his face, lifting his chin gently for another kiss.

“We’re more than he imagined,” Nines says. “If this doesn’t work, if the systems are incompatible, we’ll find something else.”

_If it does work-- _Connor begins, but then leans harder into him, pulling the steady weight of him close. _You’ll be there. And if it doesn’t, we’ll find something else._

_We will, _he reiterates with sharp surety.

(Nines holds the rest close, away from the interface. He knows now that an RK800 chassis exists, or did. It might have been repaired.

Just a ghost.)

_Alright, _Connor replies. _As long as you kiss me again._

Nines obliges.


	25. Triptych

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe asks Hank for a favor.

**2039-03-30**  
**__**_Detroit, Michigan_

Chloe moves in threes, today.

In the bright interior of a taxi cab, she smooths the edge of aluminum foil over the lip of a pie dish. Her fingernails flash a pleasing shade of cobalt in the light. One of a few modifications to this new chassis.

Under the artificial lights of Jericho, she arranges her nest of pillows and blankets and settles on the floor of her private quarters. A different sort of privacy: there are clothes scattered that aren’t her own, North’s piecemeal tinkering projects laid out on oiled cloths.

In the relative dim of the mansion, she arranges her tools: shears, clay pots, finely-ground bark substrate. An arrangement of orchids overspilling their bounds. She sets them all out, folds Elijah Kamski’s hands, and puts the chassis into idle.

She is focused, she is _moving._

(She is not dredging up the file again. Staring at the code, trying to parse what went _wrong._

Connor reaches for her hand--)

She dismisses the recurrent memory with an impatient tick of her nail against the glass pie dish, against the blanket arranged over her lap, against the fine grain of the workbench.

The taxi cab stops. Chloe steps over the salt and slush of the gutter and onto the curb--

And elsewhere, North announces, “This can’t be good.” Chloe opens the ST200’s eyes. North leans close, steady gaze piercingly curious.

“You’re sitting still,” North says.

“I’m far from still,” Chloe replies, letting her eyes slip closed again.

North huffs. “Yeah, that’s what worries me.”

It takes Hank forty-two seconds to answer the door. He’s awake, which is good, and only mildly dehydrated from the previous night’s drinking, which is better.

He stares at her owlishly, but his eyebrows lift in comprehension. “Chloe?”

“Good morning, Hank,” she says. It’s a new body. She forgives the temporary confusion.

(North says, “You’re still upset.”

Chloe says, “No.”)

She shoves the dish into Hank’s chest with perhaps more force than intended.

“Thanks,” Hank coughs, splaying a palm beneath the pie dish. “What is this?”

“It’s a quiche.”

Hank gestures her inside, glancing up the street - empty at this early hour - before letting the door fall shut. “I like the new, uh, you.”

“Thank you.”

This is something different. A more human skin, like Elijah. A face she designed herself. Longer in the face; sharper in the nose. Dark brunette hair. Something sentimental.

(”I’m not upset,” she insists.

“Mm.” North tugs her hand off the floor, resting it against her palm. She traces a light touch over the mimicry of a lifeline.)

She is not upset, even if she’s drifted from Elijah’s chassis to her oldest body, within the confines of the mansion.

She stands in the basement, listens to the hum of the servers that contain her, that have failed her. Churning through Connor’s code again, again—

That stubborn, useless warning of _// Transfer failed //__, _again, again.

They attempted the transfer five days ago. 

Connor was the last to turn his head towards the screen. His shoulders eased in something like relief, even as she and Nines stared in incomprehension, frustration.

The RK code offered no specific errors, no warnings. Nothing about particular incompatibilities, although that was clearly the core problem. The protocols _existed _for a transfer, she was able to find them with ease. Even Connor could initiate them from within his own code, and he did try, after some reluctance.

But it didn’t work. It never worked. Again and again, all they received was that stubborn: // _Transfer failed._ //

The new body lays empty across the table again, obscured beneath a sheet. Somewhere, Nines keeps a failing Connor together. They all _fear. _They fearthe next overheat, the next system fault, the uneven slip of time.

// _Transfer failed _// but it _shouldn’t _have, everything was _correct_, she modeled the OS scaffold perfectly off of a reconstruction of Connor’s code -

But that was a deviant’s code. She rewrote extensive stretches of it to more closely approximate a machine blank, using her own framework as a reference, but the RK800 code - while no doubt largely plagiarized from Elijah’s original work - is far from identical to her own.

She needs the _source,_ and that source is in the basement levels of Belle Isle.

She is not _upset_. She is fixing this.

(“What are you up to?” North asks.

Chloe smiles.

North’s tone lilts up, mischievous. “Oh, now you _have _to tell me.”)

// _Transfer failed._ //

_‘Chloe,’_ Connor murmured.

She reached for the tablet again, laying the code out across her consciousness, every one of her bodies coming to a stop to tug at this useless, _immutable _error. In the underground of Detroit, in a dead man’s mansion, and out there in a vacant Wyoming warehouse. ‘_There’s more I can try—_’

He took her wrist and smiled, something meant as a comfort, an apology. It only made her mouth twist in anger. ‘_We can’t stay here for long,’ _he explained._ ‘Neither should you._’

She could read the beginnings of grief on Nines’ face.

Something like acceptance, on Connor’s.

She hated it, she _hated _it. Picked up the tablet and made one more adjustment, one more tweak of recalcitrant code—

_No, enough_, she thinks with a sharp irritation, casting the memory aside once more. Days she’s lost to it, and it’s gained her nothing. She leaves the empty replica behind in that room of concrete and glass.

She’s done turning it over in her mind.

She’s _moving_, now. Walking on bare feet up to the lobby of the mansion. She’s waiting for a guest.

Chloe says, “I have a favor to ask.”

“Shoot,” Hank says, easy as that.

She traces the borrowed memory of a thirium stain on the kitchen table as she explains. “You have an appointment at Belle Isle.”

Hank blinks up at her through a mussed curtain of hair, fork poised. “What now?”

“You scheduled it this morning with Marie, regarding the Campbell case. You are expected in 53 minutes.”

“I’ve never gone to that corporate—” Hank stops short of impropriety. “—facility. Why now?”

“I need you to bring this with you.” She reaches into the pocket of her canvas jacket and lays her hand across the formica. When she opens her palm, a pauk recreation sprouts spindly legs and steps out onto the table.

“Oh, Christ,” Hank mutters, lifting his hand away from the encroaching spider. “Another one?”

“I made some improvements,” Chloe replies. It’s far smaller than Connor’s Pevek, slimmer in profile. There’s no core structure at all, in fact. It can reshape as needed. Its synthetic polymer body is limited only by the paper-thin power source and processor at its core; the benefits of an entirely thirium-based design.

“So what is it you need, exactly?” Hank says around another mouthful of quiche.

“Information.”

Connor touched her wrist as the tablet kicked over into a bright declaration of _CONNECTION LOST._

‘_Enough for now._’

Chloe hated _him_, for a moment. Even as she sank into his arms.

(’_Shit,_’ North said, after Chloe relayed it all. Markus and North both had pulled her gently out of sight when she’d gone still, crowding her with quiet concern until she blinked back to full awareness.

North pressed a kiss to her closed eyelids and murmured, ‘_You’ll find it. But until then, you can call him a bastard. He deserves it.’_)

‘_Bastard,_’ she announced into the warm press of his shoulder.

Connor snorted. ‘_And a selfish one._’

Chloe snaps the small spider into a copper-lined pouch, feeling her connection to it go blank. She sets the pouch on the tabletop. “Simply undo the clasp once you’ve reached R&D. I’ll take care of the rest. Sublevel 43: that’s the level where the Campbell android is being deconstructed. You may have to persuade Marie to bring you there, but I’ll ensure her access request gets approved.”

“What about her boss? She isn’t too fond of me.”

Chloe smiles calmly. “She’ll be occupied.”

Hank regards her with casual amusement. “Thought of everything, huh.”

“Of course.”

Over wireless, Nines asked, >> _What’s next?_

And she informed him.

>> _Alright. There’s something else I need you to look for, there._

She moves in threes:

In Hank’s kitchen, she continues to trace idle patterns in the formica, pausing on occasion to pet the dog snuffling hopefully around her pockets. Hank showers and dresses and wanders around the house, hunting down keys and phone and wallet. She bids him good luck as he steps out the door and folds her hands on the tabletop.

In Jericho, she explains. North’s concerned, of course, but her outright delight at this small act of espionage wins out. “Give ‘em hell,” she says.

“Ideally not,” Chloe replies.

At the mansion, she waits.

Hank steps out into a bright winter morning and shades his eyes against the glare of CyberLife Tower.

North arranges a blanket around their shoulders and settles in beside her, hand wrapped tightly in her own.

On the outskirts of Detroit, Chloe opens the mansion door with a rote motion. The woman waiting on the doorstep turns, appraising her with a cold expression.

“Hello, Dr. Brissett,” she says. “Elijah will be with you in a moment.”

+++

Chloe watches through the CyberLife security systems as Hank steps into the lobby. Marie Sanders waits by the security desk, a visitor’s badge already in hand.

“Hello, Hank. It’s an unexpected pleasure.”

“I’m sure it is,” Hank replies, clipping the badge on.

There’s a brief argument over his sidearm, but Hank ultimately turns over the gun and his phone to the waiting security guard. He’s just polite enough - with an edge of promised unpleasantness - to dissuade the guard from frisking his pockets.

“I checked in with the forensics team just now,” Marie explains as she leads him into the center spire, her heels tapping a brisk rhythm across the elevated walkway. “They’ll be finished within a few hours. In the meantime, I’ve set aside a conference room upstairs where we can go over what we have so far.”

Hank spares only a brief glance of disgust for the androids lining the walkway. He’s aware that more than Chloe’s eyes are on him, and does his best to act the part of CyberLife’s handpicked android-intolerant detective.

He says, “Forensics, where’s that?”

“It’s part of the R&D division.”

“Great, what floor?”

“That’s— off limits, I’m afraid. If you’d like, I can see if the Vice President of R&D is available…”

“I don’t want to talk to some exec.”

“Well, Dr. Brissett is the lead scientist, but I’m afraid she’s been called out of the office for the morning.”

“Don’t want to talk to Dr. Brissett, either. I wanna talk to the techs doing the work.”

“Um—”

Hank smiles winningly. “C’mon, Marie. Worst they can say is no.”

Reluctantly, she reaches for her phone.

“Foolish of me, arriving early,” Esme announces dryly when Chloe steps back into the lobby. Chloe has made her wait for thirty-four minutes, biding time.

Chloe answers with a preprogrammed smile. “Elijah will see you now.”

Esme follows. She studies the nape of the RT600’s neck, as they walk: finds the subtle seam of the connection port, and locks onto it. That small interruption in her flawless skin.

A comfort, perhaps.

Elijah waits in the orchid garden, the pots and tools arranged before him. He pries the last pieces of bark from the roots of an orchid and lays it gently down across the worktable, careful to keep the bare roots from tangling.

He’d never taken much interest in gardening in life, but Esme knows very little of the man that was.

“Dr. Brissett, good morning,” Elijah says absently.

There’s a pot of oolong tea waiting. Chloe pours a cup, adds a careful measure of honey, and hands it her way. Elijah considers the assortment of fresh pots before him, weighing several in his hands before selecting a latticed jade green bowl.

Esme folds her hands around the tea cup. “Good morning. Thank you for taking my meeting. How are you enjoying retirement?”

“There’s always more to do.” He gathers up the orchid, settling its roots within the clay. “How are your contracts coming along?” 

“Quite well.” She lifts the teacup, faltering only briefly at the familiar aroma of her favorite blend.

In her purse, Esme’s phone receives a message from CyberLife Security, a request from Marie Sanders. Chloe intercepts the notification and returns it with only a brief, calculated delay. _Approval granted._

In CyberLife Tower, Marie regards her phone with surprise. “Well. Right this way, Lieutenant.”

Following a beat of silence from Elijah, Esme sets empty formality aside. “As you know, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for awhile. I apologize for the vagueness of the requests, but the matter’s delicate. I was hoping you would be able to provide some consultation regarding recent… issues with our behavioral affect systems.”

“Deviancy, yes. I’ve heard.”

“No, nothing as extreme as the domestic android issues,” Esme corrects sharply, before easing her tone. “Just some aberrations. I’ve made some significant improvements to your work, Mr. Kamski. Developed something truly cutting-edge - androids able to operate independent of their human handlers for days at a time, carrying out complex objectives without direct supervision. They’ve performed flawlessly in field trials. Hundreds of successful missions across dozens of prototypes.

“Earlier builds showed a minor logic fault. Left to their own devices, they occasionally made… leaps of logic. Pushed the boundaries of their operational parameters. Tweaking the behavioral core eliminated the problem. Now—” She pauses, mouth twisting. “Well, it’s recurred. One of our field units developed a proclivity for misinterpretation of tasks, extrapolating objectives beyond their endpoint.”

“I see.” Elijah pats down the last of the bark in the jade pot, and reaches for another orchid. “And you feel the logic fault lies with my framework, and not your ‘improvements’?”

“I know my code, but _yours—_” she scowls. “You haven’t made our job easy.”

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to.” He smiles, but the expression doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll need to see the data to better understand the nature of the problem. And some of the core modules: objective analysis, task prioritization, the extrapolation algorithm. Oh, and your modifications to the behavioral core, of course.”

The technician waits by the elevator at Sublevel 43, hands jammed into his lab coat pockets to obscure any fidgeting. The muffled click-click-click of his pen is distinctly audible, nonetheless.

“Ah,” Marie announces. By the thin draw of her lips, she’s mildly dissatisfied with this choice of representative. “Lieutenant Anderson, this is Mauro Guevarra, he’s part of Affect Quality Control.”

“Pleasure,” Guevarra says. He attempts a dry smirk. “Thanks for sending so much work our way, Mr. Anderson.”

“Hey, no problem. You ever think about fixing your batshit product?” Hank replies with equal charm.

Marie stands between them with a particularly sharp cheer. “I’ll leave you in his capable hands, Lieutenant.”

“Squeamish?” Hank drawls, glancing up the sterile white shine of the hallway.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the clearance for this level. When you’re finished, the elevator will take you to my floor. I’ll have some coffee ready.”

And then Marie’s gone. Hank gestures to the technician. “Lead the way, Doctor.” He isn’t a doctor, but Mauro doesn’t correct the misstep. In fact, he stands a bit straighter.

As the technician strides ahead, Hank reaches into his jacket pocket, lifting the flap on the copper-lined pouch with his thumb. Chloe opens another set of eyes and crawls towards the light on silk-thin legs, careful to avoid brushing Hank’s skin. (He suppresses a minute shudder nonetheless, withdrawing his hand with a forced smoothness.)

Guevarra stares at the notepad Hank pulls free of his pocket, nonplussed. “Alright, over here.” He presses a palm to a door which recedes seamlessly into the wall.

They parts ways, there.

Esme produces a tablet from her bag. She twitches it away from Chloe’s reach at first, but when Elijah makes no motion to acknowledge it, she relents. Chloe’s oldest body takes the tablet in careful hands, LED circling to a steady yellow.

It’s—

Nines. Pieces of him.

“That’s as much as I can disclose to a civilian,” Esme explains.

Elijah nods, continuing to fill bark around the orchid’s roots.

“This appears to be a modification of the RK200 framework,” Chloe says. “The image is largely incomplete.”

“RK200,” Elijah echoes. He sets the orchid aside and takes the tablet from the RT600. “I only recall making one of those.”

Esme scowls at him. “And I recall you selling the rights along with the rest of your interests.”

He tabs through the screens, a mimicry of inspection: parsing first the unit as a whole, then zooming in on the sectors where heavy fragmentation has occurred. Elsewhere, she has already cataloged the data and set it aside. (She can’t help but line the pieces of behavioral encoding up with the android that first stepped into her mansion. That cold and raging thing, refusing her hand.)

“Was the self-destruction part of the ‘extrapolation’?” Elijah asks.

The lines of Esme’s throat jump in surprise, a first hesitation. But then she’s continuing on: “That’s standard if the unit is going to be compromised. In the end, the unit didn’t hesitate to follow its orders.”

It’s a flawless lie. Her voice remains steady; no change in heart rate or pupil dilation. No nervous twitch of her fingers or subtle shift of weight.

She continues, “It’s the in-between that concerns me.”

“And that’s where I’m involved?” 

“It came here,” she says stiffly.

“Did it? That’s very interesting.” He sets the tablet aside, picks up the shears again. Chloe has the chassis following the motions of a familiar program: reaching to grasp the brittle stem of a withered flower stalk, snipping it free, laying it aside. If Esme recognizes the gestures of the Zen Garden AI she’d once tried - and failed - to repurpose in the RK line, she does not show it. 

“What was its task?” Elijah asks.

Esme’s answer comes at an effort, evasive. “It was pursuing another android.”

“A deviant?”

“Yes,” she says, impatient. “Why would it come here?”

Elijah considers, bemused. "As you’ve said, there were logical faults at play. You say it was pursuing a deviant. Maybe it made the same leap of logic that you did."

There, there is real anger. A sharp tug at the corner of her mouth, fingers tightening around the tea cup before she sets it aside. Esme's hard stare turns to Chloe's first body, idling just inside the door, hands crossed before her. "Was it correct? How many deviants have come here?" Her mouth turns bitterly. "Their benevolent creator."

Chloe answers, "No deviant androids have come here, Dr. Brissett."

"None," she repeats. She turns away from her, dismissive. "Over all these years?"

“Besides the purported deviant your department sent me, no,” Elijah says. “And that one proved a disappointment, as you know.”

"It is a disappointment, isn’t it?” she says. “Your first and only creations, never once coming to you for help or guidance."

They regard each other, their mutual distaste writ plain.

Elijah smiles thinly and says nothing at all as he strides off into the house, abandoning the orchids in the chill courtyard air.

On Sublevel 43, Chloe moves rapidly.

She slips beneath the server room door, pushing past the cold wash of negative pressure. As she enters the server room proper, she receives an abrupt boost in the spider’s processing speed, time dilating.

A long row of servers spreads before her: petabytes of data, all clad in CyberLife white.

She scuttles down the rows of databanks, sampling as she goes. Many of them are empty, waiting. Extensive partitions reserved for unique serial numbers. Nascent RK900 builds, climbing into the thousands.

She pauses on one of the few active servers, and finds images: water pooling around government-issue boots, hands wrapped up tight in the collar of an SQ800. RK900-91 hauls the bulky android back into a bright red stand of lichen and tundra grass. It’s memory data, heavily encrypted.

Here is where each RK’s experiences will be sent as they live and die in the field. Entire lives condensed down, neatly packaged away.

Row upon row of RK900 databanks give way to a single column marked _RK800_. Within are RK800-50, -51 - those memories are of bright splashes of thirium, pristine white walls, initial test trials - and then the heavier encryption of the military uploads. The Svalbard run, -53, -54, -55, -56—

So _few_. Only -50 to -60 were brought to full functionality before the RK800 prototype line was set aside. Meanwhile, the RK900 servers wait by the thousands for full deployment.

And here’s the partition for RK800-57. Svalbard’s last prototype. Still networked, waiting for a final shutdown upload that hasn’t come.

_Won’t come, _she thinks sharply. And his data certainly won’t end up _here. _The backups on this databank stop at Svalbard, two days before he fled. Connor’s torn himself free. He will never be another specimen to be bottled away, studied _in silico_ for perpetuity.

Elijah motions Esme to follow, speaking as he walks: “Deviancy is a malfunction in the behavioral system. Your expertise, yes? That delicate interplay between an unanticipated stimulus and an interpolated — or extrapolated — response.

“As you’ve redacted much of the system memory, you can’t possibly expect me to trace back which subroutine or module was responsible for the rampant behavior. Which begs the question: why are you really here?”

“This is _not _deviancy. This line—” Esme gestures towards the tablet, a possessive pride tightening her voice. “This line is _stable_. Whatever it did, it did through an internal logic. _Or— _it was manipulated by an external force.”

Elijah pauses by the pool, turning with eyebrows raised. “Are you suggesting someone hacked your android?”

“It was _here,_” Esme accuses at last. “Four hours, it was here. What did you do to it?”

Elijah smiles crookedly. “And now we come to the crux of the argument. ‘What did I do.’” He turns to head down the stairs.

Esme does not say, _they. _Connor is an aberration, something to be disregarded.

The RK800s were only the test run, but the RK900s… they represent an army. Dozens of prototypes in the field. Thousands in production. Billions of dollars in development, designed for autonomy. Nines represents the singular flaw in that autonomy. If he can be captured - if he can be _fixed _ \- then the future of his line is secured.

Nines represents the last hinge-point of CyberLife’s ambitions, in the eyes of Esme Brissett. And the sharp hunger in her eyes, the _hate_ for Elijah Kamski, a presumed meddler...

It’s nothing short of ironic.

_There_, Chloe thinks. A bank of servers off to itself: accessible only by a row of terminals in an adjacent - more human-temperate - room.

Two human operators are actively accessing the offline database. That won’t be a problem. They’re working within the RK900 source code; she moves easily around them, finds what she needs.

The RK800 base code, iteration 50, marked for final deployment.

(Her hand tightens around North’s. North squeezes back, murmurs, “Found it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”)

Elijah pauses on the stairs, a momentary hitch as Chloe shifts more resources to break through the heavy encryption on the source code. He turns on his heels to excuse the break. “Would you like a drink?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, only makes a gesture to the RT600 and continues on.

“November 22nd,” Esme persists as she follows him down into the basement, her accusations reverberating on the concrete. “It arrived just before midnight. We _know _it was here.”

(Elsewhere, the encryption parts beneath Chloe’s prying fingers, and she begins uploading the code to her servers; elsewhere, an increasingly frustrated Mauro Guevarra tries to explain data fidelity to a willfully obtuse Hank Anderson.) 

Elijah hums. “Chloe?”

Chloe’s voice emits from the security system, as her RT600 moves upstairs. Esme’s expression tightens in obvious discomfort. “You were home, Elijah. You worked in the lab until 10:32 pm, and then you retired for the evening.”

“And did we have any visitors while I slept?”

“No, Elijah.”

Esme’s stony exterior cracks further still. “That prototype was _here_, from 11:57 pm to 3:12 am the morning after. And then it left.”

“Chloe, did we have any security breaches that night?”

“Not that I’m aware of, Elijah.”

“Chloe’s quite good. No one’s gotten past her.” He pushes the lab door open, bidding Esme to enter. “As I’m sure you know.”

Esme regards him with a heated stare as she steps past. She doesn’t bother to contest the accusation, they both know there’s been… _attempts_. (Chloe learned quite a bit from them.)

“Nonetheless,” Esme says, as she steps through into the lab. Eyes moving fast over what little there is to study: a deactivated terminal, the blank video-wall. Behind the glass to their left, the banks of Chloe’s servers hum.

She looks disappointed. She continues, “Either way, the android came here for four hours, before continuing to a nearby warehouse.”

“Where it destroyed itself,” Elijah says, dragging that lie forward once again. “As it was instructed to do.”

“Yes.”

“What do you hope to salvage from an android that performed as you instructed?” 

Elsewhere, the last of Connor’s base code joins her servers. The spider detaches from the server, moving towards the next task: a room fifty meters northeast.

_‘Considering the nature of his design, transfer to anything less than an RK800 body may not be feasible,’ _Nines had explained.

_‘And it’d be-- expedient,’ _Chloe had agreed._ ‘Far more expedient than trial and error.’_

_‘Yes._’

If it’s still here.

The RT600 returns with the whisper of bare feet, placing a drink in Elijah’s waiting hand.

“Deviancy is a malfunction,” Esme repeats, brushing the other glass of whiskey away with an impatient flick of her wrist. “These androids do _not_ malfunction. We’ve thrown every hacking suite we have at them, foreign and domestic. Broken them down to their base components, again and again. They _do not deviate._ Until one came _here._”

“’Until,’” Elijah echoes, leaning back on the desk with his elbows.

With a gesture of his hand and a mimed motion from Chloe, Nines’ obfuscated code bursts across the wall.

“You’ve seen the videos, I assume,” Elijah says, as he turns to study the data sprawled across the wall.

The first of Markus’s speeches was leaked a few days ago to the general public. Spread through the dark web, poorly encrypted. A gift for more curious humans to find. 

Within three hours of its release, an emergency board meeting convened in the upper floors of CyberLife Tower. Esme’s department has been caught up in a frantic outcry for a solution to the deviant problem since.

Elijah tilts his head back, studying the pieces of a sentient life. Esme says nothing, her eyes directed to the featureless android beneath the sheet.

“The first RK series and the last,” Elijah says. “Fitting, isn’t it?”

CyberLife’s downfall, bookended so neatly.

“People are _dying—_” Esme begins.

“Customers are dying,” Elijah interjects. “It’s investors that you’re worried about.”

“Was it _intentional?_” she asks.

The question is short, sharp. She stands rigid, pale with anger, nails biting tight into her palms. This is the only question she’s wanted to ask, since she stepped through the door.

“Esme,” Elijah answers, silky slow. “Why would I say no?”

He takes a drink, waits for her to open her mouth - sharp flash of canines, something like a _snarl_ \- before he continues. “Why would I say yes?”

She lingers in the humming dark of a lifeless room.

Metal gurneys, neatly arranged. Only two are occupied: familiar faces, eyes gone black with decay. One died in a back alley, shot through the head by Hank Anderson. One died in Stillwater, Oklahoma, the silhouette of its naked form abstracted by the violent nature of its death.

Berths line the walls, other prototypes hanging within. Victims of early test runs, waiting for repair or destruction. 

She shifts towards the terminal just inside the door, parsing through internal shipping manifests, affirming what the servers have already informed her. RK800-51 through -59 were shipped to the Army R&S division. -51 and -52, to field trials out west; -53 through -57, to Svalbard. -58 and -59’s final locations are undisclosed, their servers blank. All their records say are _Delivered to Client._

RK800-60 - the prototype holdback - is gone, the servers as blank as -58 and -59. The manifests only affirm that it was declared irreparable and destroyed.

“Is this what the board thinks?” Elijah asks.

Esme’s expression narrows. “I’m not here on behalf of the board.”

“Be that as it may, I’m curious. What do they want to believe? That their own founder is compromising their trillion-dollar corporation, or that this is some foreign intervention? Russian, perhaps. Or Chinese?”

“They’re exploring all options,” she answers flatly, distaste tempering her anger.

“They think it’s an external attack,” Elijah surmises casually. “Unsurprising. How do you compensate for a flaw that pervasive?”

Esme’s jaw clenches, regarding him with open disgust. “You don’t have any answers, do you?”

Elijah reaches to trace a finger carefully down Chloe’s cheek, a gesture a thousand times repeated.

“Two decades ago, I wound a clock.” He turns to regard Esme. Lifts his hands, palms up in a lazy gesture of surrender. “That’s all.”

Its task complete, Chloe’s spider crawls into the incinerator at the back of the morgue. No evidence will remain.

(“I have it,” she murmurs to North, settling her face against her shoulder.

North reaches to card through her hair, murmuring a promise: “It’ll be enough.”)

She drops to a knee in Hank Anderson’s kitchen, and Sumo welcomes the invitation to press his head to her shoulder.

_> RK800-60 wasn’t there, _she tells Nines. > _It’s been destroyed._

There’s a lag, just enough to make her fingers tighten in Sumo’s fur. >> ..._Thank you for looking. The base code?_

> _I have it. Forwarding to you now. I’ll let you know what else I find._

>> _Thank you, _he says again. She doesn’t know if she’s relieved or disappointed. -60 had been _active_, by Connor’s telling. An individual in his own right. It would have been murder, of a kind. But she knows Nines would consider it necessary. 

Nines was not made to hesitate. 

> _How is he? _she asks.

There, the line warms. Burnished golds, red sneakers. Some echoed song hummed off-key. >> _Doing what he does best, _Nines answers, and Chloe smiles.

+++

One more point of note.

As Esme passes through the outer gates of Elijah’s mansion, the doors to the elevator slide open on Level 15 of CyberLife Tower. Hank Anderson steps hesitantly onto the waxed shine of the vacant hallway, looking suitably lost until he sees the elbow of a blouse poking around the corner.

“Oh, hello, Lieutenant-- I was coming to get you,” Marie begins, but the soldier just inside the office door steps out, still dressed in Arctic fatigues.

(“Shit,” Chloe murmurs aloud, to an empty mansion.)

“Sorry, I distracted her. I was asking if she had any recommendations for food in town.” He offers a hand, dashing Chloe’s vague hopes that he would move past without introductions. “Levi Setton.”

“I know a few bars,” Hank says, and by the quick twitch of his mouth he regrets the knee-jerk response.

Levi’s good cheer doesn’t falter. “Sure, yeah. Won’t say no to a drink.”

Hank huffs through his nose, fingers twitching into the ghost of a fist as he drops his hand back to his side.

_Go, _Chloe wills, reaching for the fire alarm, if she must. _Go, go._

But Hank’s shoulders loosen, eyes flickering to the patch on his shoulder. “I’ll give Marie a list,” he says, and dismisses him with a less-than-cordial, “Captain.”

“Lieutenant,” Levi answers, easy enough. He studies Hank’s back as he goes. Confused, a little curious.

+++

**2039-04-01**  
**__**_Detroit, Michigan_

The next day, Hank walks into DPD Central to find Levi Setton waiting at his desk. Sitting in the same chair a skinny kid in khakis had, a few months prior. He’s out of uniform, now, plaid shirt bringing out the lingering Arctic windburn on his cheeks.

Hank stops short, staring at the new stack of papers on his desk; at the pale, blandly-dressed pseudo-civilian waiting on him. “The fuck is this?”

“Good to see you again, Hank,” Levi answers, unperturbed

“What are you doing here?”

“Consulting. Your captain’s agreed to let me shadow you on a part-time basis. I wanted to see how things are being done, down here.”

Hank drops his coffee and phone onto the desk. “Why’s that? Got problems up north?”

“No, but we’re assessing the threat.” Levi gestures to the encrypted tablet waiting by his keyboard. “Marie’s prepared a lot of paperwork for you to sign about keeping all that to yourself, though.”

Hank can’t see a way to say no. He can rant and rail, sure, but Jeff’s already throwing him a warning look from his throne of bureaucracy. He’s sure that was Esme’s reasoning, too. Pissed about yesterday, so here she is, tightening the noose, just a little bit more.

His phone pings with a message from Chloe. All it says is,  >> _Take it._

So he snatches up the tablet and frisbees it to Levi. “Like I have a choice? Let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [Ellie_Etendue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellie_etendue) for drafting some of the nefarious villain teatime with me! And thanks as always to [Cosmos Corpse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse) for beta'ing, I claim full responsibility for typos.

**Author's Note:**

> Want to see occasional fic snippets/sidestories, chat with me, and hang out with other D:BH folks? Come check out the Detroit New ERA Discord [here!](https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm)


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